“Tell thy mistress we shall obey her behest!  Doubtless she knows, as she knows all things, that to-night.  I am summoned by express command, to the Palace of our sovereign lord the King..  I am bound thither first as is my duty, but afterwards ...”  He broke off as if he found it impossible to say more, and waved his hand in a light sign of dismissal.  But Gazra did not at once depart.  He again smiled that lowering smile of his which resembled nothing so much as a hung criminal’s death-grin, and returned the jewelled signet to his breast.

“Afterwards! ... yes.. afterwards!” he said in emphatic yet mock solemn tones..  “Even so!” Advancing a little he laid his heavy, muscular hand on Theos’s chest, and appeared mentally to measure his height and breadth—­“Strong nerves! ... iron sinews! ... goodly flesh and blood! ..’twill serve!”—­and his great, protruding eyes gleamed maliciously as he spoke,—­then bowing profoundly he added, addressing both Sah-luma and Theos..  “Noble sirs, to-night out of all men in Al-Kyris shall you be the most envied!  Farewell!”—­and once more making that curious salutation which had in it so much imperiousness and so little obeisance, he walked backward a few paces in the full lustre of the set sun’s after-glow, which intensified the vivid red of his costume and lit up all the ornaments of clear-cut amber that glittered against his swarthy skin,—­then turning, he descended the hillock so swiftly that he seemed to have melted out of sight as utterly as a dark mist dissolving in air.

“By my word, a most sooty and repellent bearer of a lady’s greeting!” laughed Theos lightly, as he sauntered arm in arm with his host on the downward path leading to the garden and palace—­ “And I have yet to learn the true meaning of his message!”

“’Tis plain enough!” replied Sah-luma somewhat sulkily, with the deep flush still coming and going on his face—­“It means that we are summoned, . . thou as well as I, . . to one of Lysia’s midnight banquets,—­an honor that falls to few,—­a mandate none dare disobey!  She must have spied thee out this morning—­the only unkneeling soul in all the abject multitude-hence, perhaps, her present desire for thy company.”

There was a touch of vexation in his voice, but Theos heeded it not.  His heart gave a great bound against his ribs as though pricked by a fire-tipped arrow,—­something swift and ardent stirred in his blood like the flowing of quicksilver, . . the picture of the dusky-eyed, witchingly beautiful woman he had seen that morning in her gold-adorned ship, seemed to float between him and the light,—­her face shone out like a growing glory-flower in the tangled wilderness of his thoughts, and his lips trembled a little as he replied: 

“She must be gracious and forgiving then, even as she is fair!  For in my neglect of reverence due, I merited her scorn, . . not her courtesy.  But tell me, Sah-luma, how could she know I was a guest of thine?”