“What do you fear?” she said. “For you I am not the woman before whom all tremble, because she is surrounded by the might of the High Priest. Forget my name, Demetrios. In their lovers’ arms, women have no name. I am no longer what you think. I am nothing but a woman who loves and whose yearning for you fills her frame as far as the points of her breasts.” Demetrios did not open his lips. “Listen to me a little while longer,” she went on. “I know who enthrals you. I will not even be your mistress, nor make the least attempt to rival the queen. No, Demetrios. Do with me as you will. Take me like some little slave-wench that a man possesses for a few minutes, leaving her afterwards with a remembrance that becomes oblivion. Take me like the lowest poverty-stricken harlot who, crouching by the roadside, awaits the charity of some furtive and brutal attack of lust. After all, what am I to place myself above those women? Have the Immortals given me anything more than that with which they have endowed the most servile of all my slaves? You, at least, are Beauty incarnate, with its out spreading emanations of the Gods.” Demetrios, more steadfastly serious than before, pierced her with his glance. “Wretched creature, what do you suppose emanates from the Gods, if it be not. — ” “Love!” “Or Death!” “What mean you?” she exclaimed, starting to her feet. “Death! Yes, Death indeed! But it is so far off for me! In sixty years’ time, I’ll think of my end. Why speak to me of Death, Demetrios?” “Death this very night!” he said quietly. She laughed outright, in sheer fright. “Tonight? No, no! Who says so? Why should I die? Answer me! Speak! What means this vile mockery?” “You are condemned.” “By whom?” “By your destiny.” “How know you that?” “Because my destiny is interwoven with yours, Touni.” “Is it my fate to die now?” “It is your lot to die by my hand, on that bench.” He seized her wrist. “Demetrios!” she stammered, affrighted. “I’ll not shriek! I’ll not call for aid! Only let me speak first!” She wiped the sweat from her brow. “If death—should come from you—death will be sweet—for me. I accept it; I desire it, but hearken!” Staggering from stone to stone, she led him away in the dark night of the woods. “Since in your hands are all the gifts of the Gods,” she continued, “the first thrill of life and the final throb of agony, let both your palms, bestowing all they hold, be opened to my eyes, Demetrios. Give me the hand of Love as well as that of Death. If you do this, I die without regret.” There was no reply in the vague look he gave her, but she thought she read the “Yes” he had not uttered. Transfigured a second time, she lifted towards him a new face, where desire, born again, drove, with the strength of desperation, all terror away. ill-031 _“Demetrios!” she stammered, affrighted._