All this was delightful in the ears of her admirer, but very disconcerting.  Agias thought of the hollow civilities of Valeria’s life, as he had seen it; of the outward decorum of language, of the delicately veiled compliments, of the interchange of words that summed up, in a few polished commonplaces, a whole network of low intrigue and passion.  Was this the same world!  Could Valeria and Artemisia both be women!  The one—­a beauty, whose guilty heart was not ignorant of a single form of fashionable sin; the other—­as it were, a blossom, that was pure sweetness, in whose opening petals the clear diamond of the morning dew still remained!  Agias did not compare Artemisia with Cornelia; for Cornelia, in his eyes, was a goddess, and in beauty and passions was above the hope or regard of mortal men.

But what was one to do in an emergency like the following?  Agias had been singing the “Love Song” from the “Cyclops,” and trying to throw into the lines all the depth of tender affection which voice and look rendered possible.

  “One with eyes the fairest
    Cometh from his dwelling,
  Some one loves thee, rarest,
    Bright beyond my telling. 
  In thy grace thou shinest
  Like some nymph divinest,
  In her caverns dewy;—­
  All delights pursue thee,
  Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing,
  Shall thy head be wreathing."[126]

  [126] Translated by Shelley.

And at the conclusion of the song Artemisia threw her arms around Agias’s neck and kissed him; and then with astounding impartiality sprang into Sesostris’s lap, and patted the old Ethiop’s black cheeks, and bestowed on him all manner of endearing epithets.  What was poor Agias to do in such a case?  He blankly concluded that it had proved easier to blast the plot of Pratinas and Ahenobarbus, than to win the love—­as he meant “love”—­of this provokingly affectionate girl.  It was growing late.  Pratinas might at any time return.  And Agias constrained himself to depart.

“By Zeus!” was the exclamation he addressed to himself as he fought his way through the crowds toward his own quarters; “where will this all end?  How much longer are you going to lie in the toils of that most innocent of Circes?  Will she never open her eyes?  If I could only make her cry, ‘I hate you!’ there would be some hope; for when one hates, as I want her to, love is but a step away.  Confound that Sesostris!  For me to have to sit there, and see that baboon kissed and fondled!”

And so reflecting, he reached his rooms.  One of the luckless slave-boys who now addressed him as “Dominus,” was waiting to tell him that a very gaunt, strange-looking man, with an enormous beard, had called to see him while he was out, and would return—­so the visitor said—­in the evening, for his business was important.  “Pisander,” remarked Agias; and he stayed in that evening to meet the philosopher, although he had arranged to share a dinner with one or two other freedmen, who were his friends.