“My husband, the great Mukaukas?” asked Mandane, trying to collect her ideas.

“No.  Your son Orion, who married the emperor’s daughter,” laughed the negress.

The crazy girl stood up, looked about with a restless glance, and then, as though she had not fully understood what had been said to her, repeated:  “Orion?  Handsome Orion?”

“Aye, your sweet son, Orion!” they all shouted, as loud as though she were deaf.  Then the usually placable girl, holding her hand over her ear, with the other hit her tormentor such a smack on her thick lips that it resounded, while she shrieked out loud, in shrill tones: 

“My son, did you say?  My son Orion?—­As if you did not know!  Why, he was my lover; yes, he himself said he was, and that was why they came and bound me and cut my ears.—­But you know it.  But I do not love him—­I could, I might wish, I. . . .”  She clenched her fists, and gnashed her white teeth, and went on with panting breath: 

“Where is he?—­You will not tell me?  Wait a bit—­only wait.  Oh, I am sharp enough, I know you have him here.—­Where is be?  Orion, Orion, where are you?”

She sprang away, ran through the sheds and lifted the lids of all the color-vats, stooping low to look down into each as if she expected to find him there, while the others roared with laughter.

Most of her companions giggled at this witless behavior; but some, who felt it somewhat uncanny and whom the unhappy girl’s bitter cry had struck painfully, drew apart and had already organized some new amusement, when a neat little woman appeared on the scene, clapping her plump hands and exclaiming: 

“Enough of laughter—­now, to bed, you swarm of bees.  The night is over too soon in the morning, and the looms must be rattling again by sunrise.  One this way and one that, just like mice when the cat appears.  Will you make haste, you night-birds?  Come, will you make haste?”

The girls had learnt to obey, and they hurried past the matron to their sleeping-quarters.  Perpetua, a woman scarcely past fifty, whose face wore a pleasant expression of mingled shrewdness and kindness, stood pricking up her ears and listening; she heard from the water-shed a peculiar low, long-drawn Wheeuh!—­a signal with which she was familiar as that by which the prefect Thomas had been wont to call together his scattered household from the garden of his villa on Mount Lebanon.  It was now Paula who gave the whistle to attract her nurse’s attention.

Perpetua shook her head anxiously.  What could have brought her beloved child to see her at so late an hour?  Something serious must have occurred, and with characteristic presence of mind she called out, to show that she had heard Paula’s signal:  “Now, make haste.  Will you be quick?  Wheeuh! girls—­wheeuh!  Hurry, hurry!”

She followed the last of the slave-girls into the sleeping-room, and when she had assured herself that they were all there but the crazy Persian she enquired where she was.  They had all seen her a few minutes ago in the shed; so she bid them good-night and left them, letting it be understood that she was about to seek the missing girl.