‘You are early abroad?’ said she.

‘Yes; for the skies of Campania rebuke the sluggard who neglects them.’

‘Ah, would I could see them!’ murmured the blind girl, but so low that Glaucus did not overhear the complaint.

The Thessalian lingered on the threshold a few moments, and then guiding her steps by a long staff, which she used with great dexterity, she took her way homeward.  She soon turned from the more gaudy streets, and entered a quarter of the town but little loved by the decorous and the sober.  But from the low and rude evidences of vice around her she was saved by her misfortune.  And at that hour the streets were quiet and silent, nor was her youthful ear shocked by the sounds which too often broke along the obscene and obscure haunts she patiently and sadly traversed.

She knocked at the back-door of a sort of tavern; it opened, and a rude voice bade her give an account of the sesterces.  Ere she could reply, another voice, less vulgarly accented, said: 

’Never mind those petty profits, my Burbo.  The girl’s voice will be wanted again soon at our rich friend’s revels; and he pays, as thou knowest, pretty high for his nightingales’ tongues.

‘Oh, I hope not—­I trust not,’ cried Nydia, trembling.  ’I will beg from sunrise to sunset, but send me not there.’

‘And why?’ asked the same voice.

’Because—­because I am young, and delicately born, and the female companions I meet there are not fit associates for one who—­who...’

‘Is a slave in the house of Burbo,’ returned the voice ironically, and with a coarse laugh.

The Thessalian put down the flowers, and, leaning her face on her hands, wept silently.

Meanwhile, Glaucus sought the house of the beautiful Neapolitan.  He found Ione sitting amidst her attendants, who were at work around her.  Her harp stood at her side, for Ione herself was unusually idle, perhaps unusually thoughtful, that day.  He thought her even more beautiful by the morning light and in her simple robe, than amidst the blazing lamps, and decorated with the costly jewels of the previous night:  not the less so from a certain paleness that overspread her transparent hues—­not the less so from the blush that mounted over them when he approached.  Accustomed to flatter, flattery died upon his lips when he addressed Ione.  He felt it beneath her to utter the homage which every look conveyed.  They spoke of Greece; this was a theme on which Ione loved rather to listen than to converse:  it was a theme on which the Greek could have been eloquent for ever.  He described to her the silver olive groves that yet clad the banks of Ilyssus, and the temples, already despoiled of half their glories—­but how beautiful in decay!  He looked back on the melancholy city of Harmodius the free, and Pericles the magnificent, from the height of that distant memory, which mellowed into one hazy light all the ruder and darker shades.