s. Zoroaster, Christ, Mahommed, Cromwell,
Napoleon, believed intensely in their own missions; hence their
influence on the peoples. How can we tell what Byzantium might have
become under one mighty hand? It was torn in pieces among courtesans,
and parasites, and Christian fanatics, and Houmousians and
Houmoiousians! I have the blood of the Commneni in me. I think of it
with shame when I remember what they might have been."

"You come from the Roman Emperors?"

"The Roman Emperors?" she repeated. "When the name was a travesty, an
ignominy, a reproach! When Barbarians thronged the Forum, and the
representative of Galilee fishermen claimed power in the Capitol? Yes; I
descend, they say, from the Commneni; but I am far prouder that, on the
other hand, I come from pure Athenians. I belong to two buried worlds.
But the stone throne of the Areopagus was greater than the gold one of
Manuel."

* * *

"That animal life is to be envied perhaps," she said.

"Their pride is centred in a silver hairpin; their conscience is
committed to a priest; their credulity is contented with tradition;
their days are all the same, from the rising of one sun to another; they
do not love, they do not hate; they are like the ass that they drive,
follow one patient routine, and only take care for their food. Perhaps
they are to be envied!"

"You would not lose 'those thoughts that wander through eternity,' to
gain in exchange the peace from ignorance of the peasant or the
dullard?"

She turned her face to him, with its most beautiful smile on her lips
and in her eyes.

"No, I would not: you are right. Better to know the secrets of the gods,
even though with pain, than to lead the dull, brute life, though
painless. It is only in our dark hours that we would sell our souls for
a dreamless ease."

"Dark hours! _You_ should not know them. Ah, if you would but trust me
with some confidence! if there were but some way in which I could serve
you!"

Her eyes met his with gratitude, even while she gave him a gesture of
silence. She thought how little could the bold, straight stroke of this
man's frank chivalry cut through the innumerable and intricate chains
that entangled her own life. The knightly Excalibur could do nothing to
sever the filmy but insoluble meshes of secret intrigues.

"It is a saint's-day: I had forgotten it," she said to turn his words
from herself, while the bell of the campanile still swung through the