“The same fate awaits us both,” cried Ledscha curtly and firmly.  “Let each take care of himself.  When my turn comes and my eyes grow dim in death, I will thank them that they will not show you to me again, base wretch, throughout eternity.”

Lutarius shrieked aloud in savage fury, and tore so frantically at the strong ropes which bound him that the firm posts shook, but Ledscha turned away and approached the hut.

She leaned thoughtfully against one of the pillars that supported the roof, and the artist’s eyes watched her intently; every movement seemed to him noble and worth remembering.

With her hand shading her brow, she gazed upward to the full moon.

Hermon had already delayed speaking to her too long, but he would have deemed it criminal to startle her from this attitude.  So must Arachne have stood when the goddess, in unjust anger, raised the weaver’s shuttle against the more skilful mortal; for while Ledscha’s brow frowned angrily, a triumphant smile hovered around her mouth.  At the same time she slightly opened her exquisitely formed lips, and the little white teeth which Hermon had once thought so bewitchingly beautiful glittered between them.

Like the astronomer who fixes his gaze and tries to imprint upon his memory some rare star in the firmament which a cloud is threatening to obscure, he now strove to obtain Ledscha’s image.  He would and could model her in this attitude, exactly as she stood there, without her veil, which had been torn from her during the hand-to-hand conflict when she was captured, with her thick, half-loosened tresses falling over her left shoulder; nav, even with the slightly hooked nose, which was opposed to the old rule of art that permitted only the straight bridge of the nose to be given to beautiful women.  Her nature harmonized with the ideal. even in the smallest detail; here any deviation from reality must tend to injure the work.

She remained motionless for minutes in the same attitude, as if she knew that she was posing to an artist; but Hermon gazed at her as if spell bound till the fettered Gaul again called her name.

Then she left the supporting pillar, approached the barrier, stopped at the rope which extended from one short stake to another, and gazed at the man who was following her outside of the rope.

It was a Greek who stood directly opposite to her.  A black beard adorned his grave, handsome countenance.  He, too, had a chlamys, such as she had formerly seen on another.  Only the short sword, which he wore suspended at his right side in the Hellenic fashion, would not suit that other; but suddenly a rush of hot blood crimsoned her face.  As if to save herself from falling, she flung out both arms and clutched a stake with her right and her left hand, thrusting her head and the upper portion of her body across the rope toward the man whose appearance had created so wild a tumult in her whole being.