Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.

The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.

Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel.

It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.

But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain.