Theos looked everywhere about him, seeing yet scarcely realizing the wonders on which he gazed,--leaning one arm on the burnished edge of the car, he glanced now and then up at the dusky skies growing thick with swarming worlds, and meditated dreamily whether it might not be within the range of possibility to be lifted with Sah-luma, chariot, steeds and all into that beautiful, fathomless empyrean, and drive among planets as though they were flowers, reining in at last before some great golden gate, which unbarred should open into a lustrous Glory-Land fairer than all fair regions ever pictured!
How like a god Sah-luma looked, he mused! ... his eyes resting tenderly on the light, glittering form he was never weary of contemplating. Could there be a more perfect head than that dark one crowned with myrtle? ... could there be a more dazzling existence than that enjoyed by this child of happy fortune, this royal Laureate of a mighty King? How many poets starving in garrets and waiting for a hearing, would not curse their unlucky destinies when comparing themselves with such a Prince of Poesy, each word of whose utterance was treasured and enshrined in the hearts of a grateful and admiring people!
This was Fame indeed, . . Fame at its utmost best,--and Theos sighed once or twice restlessly as he inwardly reflected how poor and unsatisfying were his own poetical powers, and how totally unfitted he was to cope with a rival so vastly his superior. Not that he by any means desired to cross swords with Sah-luma in a duel of song,-that was an idea that never entered his mind; he was simply conscious of a certain humiliated feeling,--an impression that it' he would be a poet at all, he must go back to the very first beginning of the art and re-learn all he had ever known, or thought he knew.
Many strange and complex emotions were at work within him, . . emotions which he could neither control nor analyze,--and though he felt himself fully alive,--alive to his very finger-tips, he was ever and anon aware of a curious sensation like that experienced by a suddenly startled somnambulist, who, just on the point of awaking, hesitates reluctantly on the threshold of dreamland, unwilling to leave one realm of shadows for another more seeming true, yet equally transient. Entangled in perplexed reveries he scarcely noticed the brilliant crowds of people that were flocking hither and thither through the streets, many of whom recognizing Sah-luma waved their hands or shouted some gay word of greeting,--he saw, as it were without seeing. The whirling pageant around him was both real and unreal,--there was always a deep sense of mystery that hung like a cloud over his mind,--a cloud that no resolution of his could lift,--and often he caught himself dimly speculating as to what lay BEHIND that cloud. Something, he felt sure,--something that like the clew to an. intricate problem, would explain much that was now altogether incomprehensible,-- moreover he remorsefully realized that he had formerly known that clew and had foolishly lost it, but how he could not tell.