CHAPTER III.

The guests were all gone.  Their departing mirth and joy had been smitten down by the drunkard’s abusive words, like fresh young corn beneath a hail storm.  Rhodopis was left standing alone in the empty, brightly decorated (supper-room).  Knakias extinguished the colored lamps on the walls, and a dull, mysterious half-light took the place of their brilliant rays, falling scantily and gloomily on the piled-up plates and dishes, the remnants of the meal, and the seats and cushions, pushed out of their places by the retiring guests.  A cold breeze came through the open door, for the dawn was at hand, and just before sunrise, the air is generally unpleasantly cool in Egypt.  A cold chill struck the limbs of the aged woman through her light garments.  She stood gazing tearlessly and fixedly into the desolate room, whose walls but a few minutes before had been echoing with joy and gladness, and it seemed to her that the deserted guest-chamber must be like her own heart.  She felt as if a worm were gnawing there, and the warm blood congealing into ice.

Lost in these thoughts, she remained standing till at last her old female slave appeared to light her to her sleeping apartment.

Silently Rhodopis allowed herself to be undressed, and then, as silently, lifted the curtain which separated a second sleeping apartment from her own.  In the middle of this second room stood a bedstead of maplewood, and there, on white sheets spread over a mattress of fine sheep’s wool, and protected from the cold by bright blue coverlets’s, lay a graceful, lovely girl asleep; this was Rhodopis’ granddaughter, Sappho.  The rounded form and delicate figure seemed to denote one already in opening maidenhood, but the peaceful, blissful smile could only belong to a harmless, happy child.

One hand lay under her head, hidden among the thick dark brown hair, the other clasped unconsciously a little amulet of green stone, which hung round her neck.  Over her closed eyes the long lashes trembled almost imperceptibly, and a delicate pink flush came and went on the cheek of the slumberer.  The finely-cut nostrils rose and fell with her regular breathing, and she lay there, a picture of innocence, of peace, smiling in dreams, and of the slumber that the gods bestow on early youth, when care has not yet come.

Softly and carefully, crossing the thick carpets on tiptoe, the grey-haired woman approached, looked with unutterable tenderness into the smiling, childish face, and, kneeling down silently by the side of the bed, buried her face in its soft coverings, so that the girl’s hand just came in contact with her hair.  Then she wept, and without intermission; as though she hoped with this flood of tears to wash away not only her recent humiliation, but with it all other sorrow from her mind.

At length she rose, breathed a light kiss on the sleeping girl’s forehead, raised her hands in prayer towards heaven, and returned to her own room, gently and carefully as she had come.