There happened to be passing in the street some sturdy slaves who were bearing bales to the wharf. He hailed them and offered them a rich reward if they would help him to move the ponderous statue and set it in an empty niche beside his bed. When they had departed he searched his coffers to find gems and jewels wherewith to deck his lady of marble, but those he possessed seemed all too poor; so he took with him all his store of gold and bought from the merchants a necklace of pearls, and anklets and bracelets set with rare and precious stones. These he hung upon the cold marble and cast him down like a pilgrim at a shrine, praying his saint to accept his poor offering. So he prayed on till, outworn with passion, he slept at her feet. With the first dawn he awoke and passed into his garden to pick fresh flowers to lay upon her shrine. Then he brought an altar that he had wrought of chased gold for a great lord's hearth, and lit thereon a fire of cedar and sandal-wood, and, as the smoke of cassia and frankincense arose, he prayed and said, "Thou cold and mute image, not till I die shall I know whether the gods have sent a lying spirit to make me their sport, but this I know, that in life I shall love none but thee alone. Therefore, if thou canst not give me love for love, in pity take my life and let me rest at last." Thus he prayed, and the image neither spake nor moved, but the sweet grave eyes his hands had wrought gazed down, as if touched with ruth and tenderness, on his bended head. So all day he worshiped at the shrine; but on the morrow, as the incense-smoke was curling round her head, he heard in the street the sound of minstrelsy, and as if fascinated by the sweet music, he left his prayer half said and went forth and beheld a gay train of men and maidens who bore on a car of gold an image of the Queen of Love that he himself had wrought in the old forgotten days, now draped for her solemn festival in a saffron robe broidered with mystic characters of gold. So he donned a festal chlamys and joined the glad procession, who led the goddess back to her temple, stripped her reverently of her weeds, and laid at her shrine their offerings of golden grain and honeycomb. By midday the crowd of worshipers had all departed, and he was left alone in the dim-lit temple. He drew near the shrine where stood his masterpiece--how feeble and faulty now it seemed--and casting incense on the altar flame, he prayed with stammering lips to his goddess: "Queen of Heaven, who didst help me of yore, help me yet again. Have I not prayed, have I not wept, have I not done thee true service? I have no words to tell thee my need, but thou knowest all my heart's desire. Hear me, O Queen!" And, as he prayed, suddenly the thin flame on the altar quivered like a live thing, and leapt up till it almost touched the temple dome, sinking once more into a feeble flicker.