While Barine was telling Helena and Gorgias, also, why all this plan had been formed so hastily, Gorgias was silently comparing the two sisters.  He found it natural that he had once believed that he loved Barine; but she would not have been a fitting mistress of his house.  Life at her side would have been a chain of jealous emotions and anxieties, and her stimulating remarks and searching questions, which demanded absolute attention, would not have permitted him, after his return home, wearied by arduous toil, to find the rest for which he longed.  His eye wandered from her to her sister, as if testing the space between two newly erected pillars; and Barine, who had noticed his strange manner, suddenly laughed merrily, and asked whether they might know what building was occupying his thoughts, while a good friend was telling him that the pleasant hours in her house were over.

Gorgias started, and the apology he stammered showed so plainly how inattentively he had listened, that Barine would have had good reason to feel offended.  But one glance at her sister and another at him enabled her speedily to guess the truth.  She was pleased; for she esteemed Gorgias, and had secretly feared that she might be forced to grieve him by a refusal, but he seemed as if created for her sister.  Her arrival had probably interrupted them so, turning to Helena, she exclaimed:  “I must see my mother and our grandparents.  Meanwhile entertain our friend here.  We know each other well.  He is one of the few men who can be trusted.  That is my honest opinion, Gorgias, and I say it to you also, Helena.”

With these words she nodded to both, and Gorgias was again alone with the maiden whom he loved.

It was difficult to begin the conversation anew, and when, spite of many efforts, it would not flow freely, the shout of the overseer, which reached his ear through the opening of the roof, urging the men to work, was like a deliverance.  Promising to return again soon, as eagerly as if he had been requested to do so, he took his leave and opened the door leading into the adjoining room.  But on the threshold he started back, and Helena, who had followed him, did the same, for there stood his friend Dion, and Barine’s beautiful head lay on his breast, while his hand rested as if in benediction on her fair hair.  And—­no, Gorgias was not mistaken-the slender frame of the lovely woman, whose exuberant vivacity had so often borne him and others away with it, trembled as if shaken by deep and painful emotion.

When Dion perceived his friend, and Barine raised her head, turning her face towards him, it was indeed wet with tears, but their source could not be sorrow; for her blue eyes were sparkling with a happy light.

Yet Gorgias found something in her features which he was unable to express in words—­the reflection of the ardent gratitude that had taken possession of her soul and filled it absolutely.  While seeking the architect, Dion had met Barine, who was on her way to her grandparents, and what he had dreaded the day before happened.  The first glance from her eyes which met his forced the decisive question from his lips.