“Is it impossible to talk with you, unlucky girl, as one would with other sensible people?” Hermon burst forth wrathfully.  “Everything is carried to extremes; you condemn a brief necessary delay as breach of faith and base treachery.  This behaviour is unbearable.”

“Then you will not come?” she asked apathetically, laying her hand upon the door; but Hermon cried out in a tone half beseeching, half imperious:  “You must not go so!  If you insist upon it, surely I will come.  There is no room in your obstinate soul for kind indulgence.  No one, by the dog, ever accused me of being specially skilled in this smooth art; yet there may be duties and circumstances—­”

Here Ledscha gently opened the door; but, seized with a fear of losing this rare creature, whose singular beauty attracted him powerfully, even now, this peerless model for a work on which he placed the highest hopes, he strode swiftly to her side, and drawing her back from the threshold, exclaimed:  “Difficult as it is for me on this special day, I will come, only you must not demand what is impossible.  The right course often lies midway.  Half the night must belong to the banquet with my old friends and Daphne; the second half—­”

“To the barbarian, you think—­the spider,” she gasped hoarsely.  “But my welfare as well as yours depends on the decision.  Stay here, or come to the island—­you have your choice.”

Wrenching herself from his hold as she spoke, she slipped through the doorway and left the room.

Hermon, with a muttered oath, stood still, shrugging his shoulders angrily.

He could do nothing but yield to this obstinate creature’s will.

In the atrium Ledscha met the slave Bias, and returned his greeting only by a wave of the hand; but before opening the side door which was to lead her into the open air, she paused, and asked bluntly in the language of their people:  “Was Arachne—­I don’t mean the spider, but the weaver whom the Greeks call by that name—­a woman like the rest of us?  Yet it is said that she remained victor in a contest with the goddess Athene.”

“That is perfectly true,” answered Bias, “but she had to atone cruelly for this triumph; the goddess struck her on the forehead with the weaver’s shuttle, and when, in her shame and rage, she tried to hang herself, she was transformed into the spider.”

Ledscha stood still, and, while drawing the veil over her pallid face, asked with quivering lips, “And is there no other Arachne?”

“Not among mortals,” was the reply, “but even here in this house there are more than enough of the disagreeable, creeping creatures which bear the same name.”

Ledscha now went clown the steps which led to the lawn, and Bias saw that she stumbled on the last one and would have fallen had not her lithe body regained its balance in time.

“A bad omen!” thought the slave.  “If I had the power to build a wall between my master and the spider yonder, it should be higher than the lighthouse of Sostratus.  To heed omens guides one safely through life.  I know what I know, and will keep my eyes open, for my master too.”