Ere another year had been fully born, the world spoke in homage and in
wonder of two things.
The one, a genius which had suddenly arisen in its midst, and taken
vengeance for the long neglect of bitter years, and scourged the world
with pitiless scorn until, before this mighty struggle which it had
dared once to deride and to deny, it crouched trembling; and wondered
and did homage; and said in fear, "Truly this man is great, and truth is
terrible."
The other,--the bodily beauty of a woman; a beauty rarely seen in open
day, but only in the innermost recesses of a sensualist's palace; a
creature barefooted, with chains of gold about her ankles, and loose
white robes which showed each undulation of the perfect limbs, and on
her breast the fires of a knot of opal; a creature in whose eyes there
was one changeless look, as of some desert beast taken from the freedom
of the air and cast to the darkness of some unutterable horror; a
creature whose lips were forever mute, mute as the tortured lips of
Læna.
One day the man whom the nations at last had crowned, saw the creature
whom it was a tyrant's pleasure to place beside him now and then, in the
public ways, as a tribune of Rome placed in his chariot of triumph the
vanquished splendor of some imperial thing of Asia made his slave.
Across the clear hot light of noon the eyes of Arslàn fell on hers for
the first time since they had looked on her amidst the pale poppies, in
the noonrise, in the fields.
They smiled on her with a cold, serene, ironic scorn.
"So soon?" he murmured, and passed onward, whilst the people made way
for him in homage.
He had his heart's desire. He was great. He only smiled to think--all
women were alike.
Her body shrank, her head dropped, as though a knife were thrust into
her breast.
But her lips kept their silence to the last. They were so strong, they
were so mute; they did not even once cry out against him, "For thy
sake!"