A voice in the distance gave a cry, and there was an answering echo.
Natasha shivered. She started, sighed, and then rose. Down the low,
broad steps she descended into the garden, and found herself on the
sandy path. The fine grey sand grated under her small and narrow feet,
which left behind their delicate traces.
Natasha approached the white marble statue.
For a long time she gazed upon the tranquil beauty of the goddess’s
face, so remote from her own tedious, dried-up life, and then upon the
ever-youthful form, nude and unashamed, radiating freedom. Roses
bloomed at the foot of the plain pedestal. They added the enchantment
of their brief aromatic existence to the enchantment of eternal beauty.
Very quietly Natasha addressed the Aphrodite.
“If he should come to-day, I will put into the buttonhole of his jacket
the most scarlet, the most lovely of these roses. He is swarthy, and
his eyes are dark—yes, I shall take the most scarlet of your roses!”
The goddess smiled. Gathering up with her beautiful hands the serene
draperies which fell about her knees, silently but unmistakably she
answered, “Yes.”
And Natasha said again: “I will plait a wreath of scarlet roses, and I
will let down my hair, my long, dark hair; and I will put on the
wreath, and I will dance and laugh and sing, to comfort him, to make
him joyous.”
And again the goddess said to her, “Yes.”
Natasha spoke again: “You will remember him. You will recognize him.
You gods remember everything. Only we people forget. In order to
destroy and to create—ourselves and you.”
And in the silence of the white marble was clear the eternal “Yes,” the
comforting answer, “Yes.”
Natasha sighed and took her eyes from the statue. The sunrise blazed
into a flame; the joyous garden smiled with the radiations of dawn’s
ever-youthful, triumphant laughter.