But so soon as her hand found nothing more on the empty trencher the bright illusion vanished, and she looked with dismay into the empty oil-cup and at the place where just now the bread had been.

“Ah!” she sighed from the bottom of her heart; then she turned the platter over as though it might be possible to find some more bread and oil on the other side of it, but finally shaking her head she sat looking thoughtfully into her lap; only for a few minutes however, for the door opened and the slim form of her sister Klea appeared, the sister whose meagre rations she had dreamily eaten up, and Klea had been sitting up half the night sewing for her, and then had gone out before sunrise to fetch water from the Well of the Sun for the morning sacrifice at the altar of Serapis.

Klea greeted her sister with a loving glance but without speaking; she seemed too exhausted for words and she wiped the drops from her forehead with the linen veil that covered the back of her head as she seated herself on the lid of the chest.  Irene immediately glanced at the empty trencher, considering whether she had best confess her guilt to the wearied girl and beg for forgiveness, or divert the scolding she had deserved by some jest, as she had often succeeded in doing before.  This seemed the easier course and she adopted it at once; she went up to her sister quickly, but not quite unconcernedly, and said with mock gravity: 

“Look here, Klea, don’t you notice anything in me?  I must look like a crocodile that has eaten a whole hippopotamus, or one of the sacred snakes after it has swallowed a rabbit.  Only think when I had eaten my own bread I found yours between my teeth—­quite unexpectedly—­but now—­”

Klea, thus addressed, glanced at the empty platter and interrupted her sister with a low-toned exclamation.  “Oh!  I was so hungry.”

The words expressed no reproof, only utter exhaustion, and as the young criminal looked at her sister and saw her sitting there, tired and worn out but submitting to the injury that had been done her without a word of complaint, her heart, easily touched, was filled with compunction and regret.  She burst into tears and threw herself on the ground before her, clasping her knees and crying, in a voice broken with sobs: 

“Oh Klea! poor, dear Klea, what have I done! but indeed I did not mean any harm.  I don’t know how it happened.  Whatever I feel prompted to do I do, I can’t help doing it, and it is not till it is done that I begin to know whether it was right or wrong.  You sat up and worried yourself for me, and this is how I repay you—­I am a bad girl!  But you shall not go hungry—­no, you shall not.”

“Never mind; never mind,” said the elder, and she stroked her sister’s brown hair with a loving hand.

But as she did so she came upon the violets fastened among the shining tresses.  Her lips quivered and her weary expression changed as she touched the flowers and glanced at the empty saucer in which she had carefully placed them the clay before.  Irene at once perceived the change in her sister’s face, and thinking only that she was surprised at her pretty adornment, she said gaily:  “Do you think the flowers becoming to me?”