As the slave turned away, he spoke.

"Hath thy lady retired?"

The man stopped in the doorway.

"Lord, I know not."

"Then find out. If not, bid her come to me here."

The man, bending, crossed his arms before his face, and went. Eudemius
lay and waited, watching the wan lightning at play in the lowering sky,
listening to the far-off grumble of the thunder. Scents from the garden
drifted to him on the warm sickly breeze; once a bat flapped past the
window. His eyes grew heavy with drowsiness.

But a step close at hand aroused him. He turned his head and saw Varia
coming toward him, her face pale in the dim light. She stopped when she
reached the couch, and stood waiting in silence. Eudemius rose,
carefully, lest he bring on a spasm of pain, and stood under the light
of the seven lamps.

"Come here to me, child!" he said. Varia came, and stood where the light
fell on her face and throat; and he took her by the shoulders and looked
long at her. His dark eyes passed over her from brow to feet; noted the
dusky warmth of her hair, where jewels gleamed like a coiled snake's
eyes; the curves of cheek and throat, the ripening grace of her slim
body, half-revealed beneath her silken robe. He studied her with an
impersonal criticism, as though she were a statue with whose workmanship
fault might be found. Had she been a statue, he could have found no
fault.

"Thou art fair, child," he said musingly, while she stood passive under
his hands. "Art thou fair enough to win him, handicapped as thou art?
And yet, who would take thee, when there are others for the asking, as
fair as thou and with none of thy defects? If thou didst but know how to
use that beauty of thine, it might make less of difference. For men have
wedded fools before this. Ay, but those fools must have been half woman
as well as fool; but thou--thou art all fool."

He looked at her strangely; suddenly pushed aside the robe from her
shoulders and laid his hands on her soft bare flesh.

"Ay, she's fair enough!" he muttered. "If I could but lash that torpid
soul of hers to life--teach her what all other women in the world know
by nature and instinct! For if she have the beauty of the immortal
women, without the warm spirit of sex behind it, it will avail her
nothing. Passionless, she can never inspire passion. To see her mated to
him--his child in her arms--a son--a son!--who should redeem for me all
the bitterness and the disappointment she hath brought--wo