"You're a little monkey," said the woman.
And she opened the door and lifted a curtain.
Tarrar and Caleb, dismayed, tried to stop her:
"The master will beat me!" said Tarrar, shivering. "That impudent wench!"
But Caleb, with his finger to his mouth, told him to be silent ... and listened at the door.
The veiled woman stood in Lucius' room. Lucius lay on a couch in mournful meditation. He opened his eyes wide with amazement.
"I am Tamyris," said the woman. "Lucius, I am Tamyris. I am famed for my beauty; and I have kept kings waiting on the threshold of my villa on Lake Mareotis merely out of caprice. I once kissed a negro slave while the King of Pontus was waiting; and, when my black lover held me in his arms, I called the king in ... and then showed him the door and drove him away."
"No, it's not true," she said. "But what is true is this, that I have been burning with love for you since the day when I saw you, beautiful as a god, on the threshold of Amphris' pyramid. Lucius, I want to be your slave. I want to serve and love you. I will cure you and make you laugh. I shall make you forget all your sorrow. Lucius, I have served the sacred goddess Aphrodite since I was a child of six. She has taught me, through oracles and dreams, the utter secret of her science, the secret of her highest voluptuousness, which she herself did not know until she loved Adonis. Lucius, if you will love me, I shall be your slave and reveal the secret of Adonis to you."
"Lucius," said Tamyris, "I have never asked a man to love me. But my days, since I looked into the mournful depths of your eyes, have been like withered gardens and my nights like scorched sands. I suffer and I am ill. I have an everlasting thirst here, in my throat, despite draughts cooled with snow and fruit steeped in silphium. See, my hands shake as though I were in a fever. See, Lucius, how my hands shake. They want to fondle you, to fondle your limbs and...."
"Lucius, I long to be your slave. I, Tamyris, the famous hetaira, who possess treasures, as you do, and the largest beryl discovered in Ethiopia, I long to be your slave and I long to shake your pillows high and soft and to lave your feet in nard and to dry them with my kisses, kiss after kiss until they are dry."