“Ah! so that is how it is!  A friend of the Muses.  We saved the large lute—­that is well.  My chlamys has an ugly hole in it—­if the girls were not asleep . . . but the first thing to-morrow Ague. . . .  Tell me, is she handsome, tall?”

Herse had been watching her excitable husband with much satisfaction and now answered his question:  “Not a Hera—­not a Muse—­decidedly not.  Hardly above the middle height, slightly made, but not small, black eyes, long lashes, dark straight eyebrows.  I could hardly, like Orpheus, call her beautiful. . .”

“Oh yes, mother.—­Beautiful is a great word, and one my father has taught me to use but rarely; but she—­if she is not beautiful who is?—­when she raised her large dark eyes and threw back her head to bring out her lament; tone after tone seemed to come from the bottom of her heart and rise to the furthest height of heaven.  Ah, if Agne could learn to sing like that!  ’Throw your whole soul into your singing.’—­You have told her that again and again.  Now, Gorgo can and does.  And she stood there as steady and as highly strung as a bow, every note came out with the ring of an arrow and went straight to the heart, as clear and pure as possible.”

“Be silent!” cried the old man covering his ears with his hands.  “I shall not close an eye till daylight, and then . . .  Orpheus, take that silver—­take it all, I have no more—­go early to market and buy flowers—­laurel branches, ivy, violets and roses.  But no lotuses though the market here is full of them; they are showy, boastful things with no scent, I cannot bear them.  We will go crowned to the Temple of the Muses.”

“Buy away, buy all you want!” said Herse laughing, as she showed her husband some bright gold pieces.  “We got that to-day, and if all is well. . . . " Here she paused, pointed to the curtain, and went on again in a lower tone:  “It all depends of course, on Agne’s playing us no trick.”

“How so?  Why?  She is a good girl and I will. . .”

“No, no,” said Herse holding him back.  “She does not know yet what the business is.  The lady wants her. . .”

“Well?”

“To sing in the Temple of Isis.”

Karnis colored.  He was suddenly called from a lovely dream back to the squalid reality.  “In the Temple of Isis,” he said gloomily.  “Agne?  In the face of all the people?  And she knows nothing about it?”

“Nothing, father.”

“No?  Well then, if that is the case . . .  Agne, the Christian, in the Temple of Isis—­here, here, where Bishop Theophilus is destroying all our sanctuaries and the monks outdo their master.  Ah, children, children, how pretty and round and bright a soap-bubble is, and how soon it bursts.  Do you know at all what it is that you are planning?  If the black flies smell it out and it becomes known, by the great Apollo! we should have fared better at the hands of the pirates.  And yet, and yet.—­Do you know at all how the girl . . . ?”