-stall, the Portuguese Missions, the Society for the Conversion
of the Jews, and important social duties took up all his leisure.
Besides, he thought the whole ceremony unscriptural.

Lucian passed on his way, wondering at the strange contrasts of the
Middle Ages. How was it that people who could devise so beautiful a
service believed in witchcraft, demoniacal possession and obsession, in
the incubus and succubus, and in the Sabbath an in many other horrible
absurdities? It seemed astonishing that anybody could even pretend to
credit such monstrous tales, but there could be no doubt that the dread
of old women who rode on broomsticks and liked black cats was once a very
genuine terror.

A cold wind blew up from the river at sunset, and the scars on his body
began to burn and tingle. The pain recalled his ritual to him, and he
began to recite it as he walked along. He had cut a branch of thorn
from the hedge and placed it next to his skin, pressing the spikes into
the flesh with his hand till the warm blood ran down. He felt it was an
exquisite and sweet observance for her sake; and then he thought of the
secret golden palace he was building for her, the rare and wonderful city
rising in his imagination. As the solemn night began to close about the
earth, and the last glimmer of the sun faded from the hills, he gave
himself anew to the woman, his body and his mind, all that he was, and
all that he had.

IV

In the course of the week Lucian again visited Caermaen. He wished to
view the amphitheatre more precisely, to note the exact position of the
ancient walls, to gaze up the valley from certain points within the
town, to imprint minutely and clearly on his mind the surge of the hills
about the city, and the dark tapestry of the hanging woods. And he
lingered in the museum where the relics of the Roman occupation had been
stored; he was interested in the fragments of tessellated floors, in the
glowing gold of drinking cups, the curious beads of fused and colored
glass, the carved amber-work, the scent-flagons that still retained the
memory of unctuous odors, the necklaces, brooches, hair-pins of gold and
silver, and other intimate objects which had once belonged to Roman
ladies. One of the glass flagons, buried in damp earth for many hundred
years, had gathered in its dark grave all the splendors of the light, and
now shone like an opal with a moonlight glamour and gleams of gold and
pale sunset green, and im