VI ENTHUSIASM So, the deed was accomplished. Chrysis had the proof. If Demetrios had brought himself to commit the first crime, the two others had probably followed without delay. A man of his rank would consider murder, and even sacrilege, as less dishonourable than theft. He had obeyed, consequently he was a captive. This man, free, impassive, and cold as he was, had submitted to the yoke of slavery like the others, and his mistress, his tamer, it was she, Chrysis, Sarah of Gennesaret. Ah! to think of it, to repeat it, to say it out aloud, alone! Chrysis rushed out of the noisy house and ran quickly, straight before her, with the fresh breeze of morning bathing her face. She went as far as the Agora along the road which led to the sea, at the end of which the masts of eight hundred ships stood huddled together like gigantic stalks of corn. Then she turned to the right, before the immense avenue of the Dromos where the house of Demetrios was. A thrill of pride came over her when she passed in front of the windows of her future lover; but she did not commit the indiscretion of attempting to see him the first. She followed the long road as far as the Canopic Gate, and cast herself upon the ground between two aloes. He had done it. He had done everything for her, certainly more than any lover had ever done for any woman. She repeated it unceasingly and reiterated her triumph again and again. Demetrios, the Well-Beloved, the impossible and hopeless dream of so many feminine hearts, had run every sort of peril for her, every kind of shame, of willing remorse. He had even abjured the ideal of his thought, he had despoiled his handiwork of the miraculous necklace, and that day which was just dawning would see the lover of the goddess at the feet of his new idol. “Take me! take me!” she cried. She adored him now. She called out for him. She longed for him. The three crimes became metamorphosed in her mind into three heroic actions, in return for which she would never be able to give enough affection, enough passion. With what an incomparable flame would their love burn—this unique love of two beings equally young, equally beautiful, equally loved by one another and united for ever after the conquest of so many obstacles. ill-058 _She extended her arms._ They would go away together, they would set sail for mysterious countries, for Amaronthis, for Epidauros, or even for that unknown Rome which was the second town in the world after immense Alexandria, and which had undertaken the subjugation of the earth. What would they not do, wherever they might be? What joy would be a stranger to them, what human felicity would not envy them theirs, and pale before their enchanted passage? Chrysis rose from the ground, dazzled, She extended her arms, set back her shoulders, threw out her bust. A sensation of languor and mounting joy stiffened her firm breasts. She set out for home . . .