gentine
rings and discs, rectangles and lozenges, close together--a silver
mail. It fell unbroken from her neck and hid her feet, but its long open
sleeves left her arms bare.

In the room was a table of ivory, bearing cakes and fruit, an ivory jug
of milk, a crystal jug of wine of a pale rose-colour, and a white loaf.

"Here we do not kill to eat," she said; "but I think you will like what
I can give you."

I told her I could desire nothing better than what I saw. She seated
herself on a couch by the table, and made me a sign to sit by her.

She poured me out a bowlful of milk, and, handing me the loaf, begged
me to break from it such a piece as I liked. Then she filled from the
wine-jug two silver goblets of grotesquely graceful workmanship.

"You have never drunk wine like this!" she said.

I drank, and wondered: every flower of Hybla and Hymettus must have sent
its ghost to swell the soul of that wine!

"And now that you will be able to listen," she went on, "I must do what
I can to make myself intelligible to you. Our natures, however, are so
different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we,
that is such as I--we are but a few--live to live on. Old age is to you
a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we
are to our perfection. Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and
lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet
ripe, and have lived thousands of your years--how many, I never cared to
note. The everlasting will not be measured.

"Many lovers have sought me; I have loved none of them: they sought but
to enslave me; they sought me but as the men of my city seek gems of
price.--When you found me, I found a man! I put you to the test; you
stood it; your love was genuine!--It was, however, far from ideal--far
from such love as I would have. You loved me truly, but not with true
love. Pity has, but is not love. What woman of any world would return
love for pity? Such love as yours was then, is hateful to me. I knew
that, if you saw me as I am, you would love me--like the rest of
them--to have and to hold: I would none of that either! I would be
otherwise loved! I would have a love that outlived hopelessness,
outmeasured indifference, hate, scorn! Therefore did I put on cruelty,
despite, ingratitude. When I left you, I had shown myself such as you
could at least no longer follow from pity: I was no longer in need
of you! But you must