It was a disappointment to her to find it locked, but Bias did not heed her angry complaint, and led her into the artist’s sitting room, requesting her to wait for his master there.

Then he hurried to the steps, and by a significant sign informed the sculptor that something important required his attention.

Hermon understood him, and Bias soon had an opportunity to tell the artist who it was that desired to speak to him and where he had taken Ledscha.  He also made him aware that he feared some evil from her, and that, in an alarming vision, she had appeared to him as a hideous spider.

Hermon laughed softly.  “As a spider?  The omen is appropriate.  We will make her a woman spider—­an Arachne that is worth looking at.  But this strange beauty is one of the most obstinate of her sex, and if I let her carry out her bold visit in broad daylight she will get the better of me completely.  The blood must first be washed from my hands here.  The wounded sea eagle tore the skin with its claw, and I concealed the scratch from Daphne.  A strip of linen to bandage it!  Meanwhile, let the impatient intruder learn that her sign is not enough to open every door.”

Then he entered his sitting room, greeted Ledscha curtly, invited her to go into the studio, unlocked it, and left her there alone while he went to his chamber with the slave and had the slight wound bandaged comfortably.

While Bias was helping his master he repeated with sincere anxiety his warning against the dangerous beauty whose eyebrows, which had grown together, proved that she was possessed by the demons of the nether world.

“Yet they increase the austere beauty of her face,” assented the artist.  “I should not want to omit them in modelling Arachne while the goddess is transforming her into a spider!  What a subject!  A bolder one was scarcely ever attempted and, like you, I already see before me the coming spider.”

Then, without the slightest haste, he exchanged the huntsman’s chiton for the white chlamys, which was extremely becoming to his long, waving beard, and at last, exclaiming gaily, “If I stay any longer, she will transform herself into empty air instead of the spider,” he went to her.

CHAPTER VIII.

While waiting in the studio Ledscha had used the time to satisfy her curiosity.

What was there not to be seen!

On pedestals and upon the boards of the floor, on boxes, racks, and along the wall, stood, lay, or hung the greatest variety of articles:  plaster casts of human limbs and parts of the bodies of animals, male and female, of clay and wax, withered garlands, all sorts of sculptor’s tools, a ladder, vases, cups and jars for wine and water, a frame over which linen and soft woollen materials were spread, a lute and a zither, several seats, an armchair, and in one corner a small table with three dilapidated book rolls, writing tablets, metal styluses, and reed pens.