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Updated: June 20, 2025
"It is the ring my wife gave me when we were married," Manuel replied. "Then you must give it to me, dear Manuel." "No, no, I cannot part with it." "But it is beautiful, and I want it," Sesphra said. So Manuel gave him the ring. Now Sesphra began again to talk of matters not to be recorded.
You had comeliness and wit and youth and courage, and these you gave the image, shaping it boldly to your proud youth's will and in your proud youth's likeness. But human pity and any constant love you did not then have to give, either to your fellows or to the fine figure you made, nor, very certainly, to me. So you amused yourself by making Sesphra and by making me that which we are to-day."
"You tempt me, Sesphra, with an old undying desire, and you have laid strong enchantments on me, but, no, I cannot go with you." The hand of Sesphra closed upon the hand of Manuel caressingly. Manuel said: "I will go with you. But what will become of the woman and the child whom I leave behind me unfriended?" "That is true. There will be nobody to look out for them, and they will perish miserably.
These princes, Sesphra, are my good friends, and they are powerful friends, upon whose favor I am dependent." "Yes, but how beautiful these replies are worded! See now, dear Manuel, how divertingly you have described King Helmas' hideous nose in your letter to King Helmas, and how trenchant is that paragraph about the scales of his mermaid wife " "I admit that passage is rather droll "
That is always possible with the priests of Philistia, and indeed the priests of Sesphra can be made to help anybody in anything. And as for your Hamadryad, I will attend to her myself." "But, no," says Jurgen, "I am ready enough in all conscience to compromise elsewhere: but to compound with the forces of Philistia is the one thing I cannot do." "Do you mean that, King Jurgen?"
"I am pagan," the thing said, in a sweet mournful voice, "and therefore I might not come to you until your love was given to the unchristened. For I was not ever christened, and so my true name is not known to anybody. But in the far lands where I am worshipped as a god I am called Sesphra of the Dreams."
"Sesphra of the Dreams," says Manuel, presently, "you are bewitching me, for when I listen to you I see that Manuel's imperilled lands make such a part of earth as one grain of sand contributes to the long narrow beach we are treading.
"Look you, adorable and all-masterful Sesphra, I have followed noble loves. I aspired to the Unattainable Princess, and thereafter to the unattainable Queen of a race that is more fine and potent than our race, and afterward I would have no less a love than an unattainable angel in paradise.
"I at least have read every word that was ever written by any of these three," replied the priest of Sesphra "and with, as I need hardly say, the liveliest abhorrence. And this Gowlais in particular, as I hasten to agree with my learned confrere, is a most notorious heretic " "Oh, sir," said Jurgen, horrified, "whatever are you telling me about Gowlais!"
And I see Sesphra whom I made so strong and strange and beautiful, and it is as if in a half daze I hear that obdurate wind commingled with the sweet voice of Sesphra while you are talking of matters which it is not safe to talk about." "Yes, that is the way it is, Manuel, and the way it should be, and the way it always will be as long as life is spared to you, now.
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