Her eyes were extraordinary: blue but dark and bright at the same time, changing and glinting like moonstones, half closed under drooping lashes. Those eyes looked, as sirens sing . . . The priest turned towards her, waiting for her to speak. She said: “Chrysis, O Chryseia, supplicates thee. Accept the poor gifts she lays at thy feet. Hear, love, and solace her that lives after thine example and for the cult of thy name, and grant her her prayers.” She held out her hands gilded with rings, and bent low with her legs close together. The vague canticle began again. The murmur of the harps rose up towards the statue with the swirling fumes of crackling incense from the priest’s censer. ill-039 _“To thee, O Hetaira! . . . Chrysis consecrates her necklace.”_ She drew herself up slowly to her full height and offered a bronze mirror which hung from her girdle. “To thee, Astarte of the Night, that joinest hand to hand and lip to lip, and whose symbol is like to the footprint of the deer upon the pale soil of Syria, Chrysis consecrates her mirror. It has seen the haggard darkness of the eyelids and the glitter of the eyes after love, the hair glued to the temples by the sweat of thy battles, O! warrior-queen of ruthless hand, thou that joinest body to body and mouth to mouth.” The priest laid the mirror at the feet of the statue. Chrysis drew from her golden hair a long comb of red copper, the planetary metal of the goddess. “To thee,” she said, “Anadyomene, born of the rosy dawn and the sea-foam’s smile; to thee. O nudity shimmering with tremulous pearls, that didst bind thy dripping hair with ribbons of green seaweed, Chrysis consecrates her comb. It has plunged into her hair tossed by thy convulsions, O furiously-panting mistress of Adonis, that furrowest the camber of the loins and racks the stiffening knee!” She gave the comb to the old man and inclined her head to the right in order to take off her emerald necklace. “To thee”, she said, “O! Hetaira, that drivest away the blushes of shamefaced maidens and promptest the lewd laugh, for whom we sell the love that streams from our entrails, Chrysis consecrates her necklace. It was given to her for her fee by a man whose name she knows not, and each emerald is a kiss on which thou hast lived an instant.” ill-040 She made a last and more prolonged reverence, put the collar into the priest’s hand and took a step as if to depart. The priest stayed her: “What do you ask of the goddess for these precious offerings?” She shook her head, smiled, and said: “I ask nothing.” Then she passed along the procession, stole a rose from a basket, and put it in her mouth as she went out. One by one all the women followed. The door closed upon the empty temple. Demetrios remained alone, concealed in the bronze pedestal.