Aphrodite: Book One: Chapter Three. Demetrios
ON the plaza abandoned by the musicians Demetrios remained alone, resting on his elbows. He heard the sea murmur, the vessels creak slowly, the wind pass beneath the stars. The whole town was lighted by a little dazzling cloud which had lingered over the moon and the light in the sky was softened. The young man looked about him; the tunics of the flute-players had left two imprints in the dust. He recalled their faces; they were two Ephesians. The eldest had seemed pretty to him, but the youngest was without charm; and, as ugliness made him suffer, he avoided thinking of her. At his feet shone an object of ivory. He picked it up; it was a writing tablet whence hung a silver stylus. Its wax was almost used up but the letters must have been traced over several times so that, the last time, they were cut into the ivory. He saw but three words written there: MYRTIS LOVES RHODOCLEIA And he asked himself to which of the two women this belonged and whether the other were the loved woman or, indeed, some unknown, abandoned at Ephesos. Then he thought a moment of rejoining the musicians to give back what was, perhaps, the souvenir Demetrios gazed at her, and guessing beyond all doubt what simple and fresh emotion moved this young girl, he said, "I am the first to adore it." The queen was not angry at this precipitancy, but demanded, drawing back, "Dost think thyself Adonis, to touch the goddess?" He replied, "Yes." She gazed at him, smiled a little, and concluded, "Thou art right." It was for this reason that he became insupportable and that his best friends were lost to him; but the hearts of all women doted upon him. When he passed into a hall of the palace the slaves stopped, the He had adored her thus when he entered upon the jetty at the hour when the crowd was dispersing and heard the sorrowful song of the flute-players. But this evening he had refused to visit the women of the temple. because a couple, half seen under the branches, had filled him with disgust and revolted his very soul. Little by little, the gentle influence of the night worked upon him. He turned his face toward the wind which had passed over the sea and seemed to draw toward Egypt the scent of the roses of Amathus. Lovely feminine forms sketched themselves in his thought. He had been requested to make, for the garden of the goddess, a group of the three Charities enlaced; but his youth revolted at copying conventions and he dreamed of uniting on the same block of marble three gracious movements of woman: two of the Charities would be clothed, one holding a fan and half closing her eyelids at the breath of the swaying plumes; the other dancing among the folds of her robe. The third, behind her sisters, would be nude and her raised arms would twist upon the nape of her neck the mass of her rolled hair. He engendered in his spirit still other projects—as to attach to the rocks of the Pharos an Andromeda of black marble before the rough monster of the sea; to enclose the hill of Bruchion between the four horses of the rising sun, each one a mettlesome Pegasus—and with what intoxication did he not exult at the idea which was coming to birth in him of a Zagreus terrified before the approach of the Titans. Ah! how he was seized by all beauty! How he toreDEMETRIOS
