man thinks he has a right to oppress and insult a girl and try to entrap her.  You, and others like you, know nothing of small things, for you are sheltered by walls and privileges.  We are every man’s game, while they approach you as humbly as if you were goddesses.—­Besides!  It is not only what I have heard from Karnis, who knows the world and fine folks like you; I have seen it for myself at Rome, in the senators’ houses, where there were plenty of young lords and great men’s daughters—­for I have not gone through life with my eyes shut; with you love is like lukewarm water in a bath, but it catches us like fire.  Sappho of Lesbos flung herself from the Leucadian rock because Phaon flouted her, and if I could save Marcus from any calamity by doing the same, I would follow her example.—­You have a lover, too; but your feeling for him, with all the ‘intellect’ and ‘reflections,’ and ‘thought’ of which you spoke, cannot be the right one.  There is no but or if in my, love at any rate; and yet, for all that, my heart aches so sorely and beats so wildly, I will wait patiently with Eusebius and submit to whatever I am bidden.—­And in spite of it all you condemn me unheard, for you. . . .  But why do you stand and look like that?  You look just like you did that time when I heard you sing.  By all the Muses! but you, too, like us, have some fire in your veins, you are not one of the lukewarm sort; you are an artist, and a better one than I; and if you ever should feel the right love, then—­then take care lest you break loose from propriety and custom—­or whatever name you give to the sacred powers that subdue passion—­even more wildly than I—­who am an honest girl, and mean to remain so, for all the fire and flame in my breast!”

Gorgo remembered the hour in which she had, in fact, proffered to the man of her choice as a free gift, the love which, by every canon of propriety, she ought only to have granted to his urgent wooing.  She blushed and her eyes fell before the humble little singer; but while she was considering what answer she could make men’s steps were heard approaching, and presently Eusebius and Marcus entered the room, followed by Gorgo’s lover.  Constantine was in deep dejection, for one of his brothers had lost his life in the burning of his father’s ship-yard, and as compared with this grief, the destruction of the timber stores which constituted the chief part of his wealth scarcely counted as a calamity.

Gorgo had met him with a doubtful and embarrassed air; but when she learnt of the blow that had fallen on him and his parents, she clung to him caressingly and tried to comfort him.  The others sympathized deeply with his sorrow; but soon it was Dada’s turn to weep, for Eusebius brought the news of her foster-parent’s death in the fight at the Serapeum, and of Orpheus being severely wounded.