“It is a Venus, is it not?” asked Sabina with an odd little timidity.

“Aphrodite,” answered Malipieri, almost unconsciously.

It was not the plump, thick-ankled, doubtfully decent Venus which the late Greeks made for their Roman masters; it was not that at all.  It was their own Aphrodite, delicate, tender and deadly as the foam of the sea whence she came to them.

Sabina would scarcely have wondered if she had turned and smiled, there on the ground, to brush the shadows of ages from her opening eyes, and to say “I must have slept,” like a woman waked by her lover from a dream of kisses.  That would have seemed natural.

Malipieri felt that he was holding his breath.  Sabina was so close to him that it was as if he could feel her heart beating near his own, and as fast; and for a moment he felt one of those strong impulses which strong men know when to resist, but to resist which is like wrestling against iron hands.  He longed, as he had never longed for anything in his life, to draw her yet closer to him and to press his lips hard upon hers, without a word.

Instead, he edged away from her, and held the lights low beside the wonderful statue so that she might see it better; and Aphrodite’s longing mouth, that had kissed gods, was curved with a little scorn for men.

The air was still and dry, and Sabina felt a strange little thrill in her hair and just at the back of her neck.  Perhaps, in the unknown ways of fruitful nature, the girl was dimly aware of the tremendous manly impulse of possession, so near her in that narrow and silent place.  Something sent a faint blush to her cheek, and she was glad there was not much light, and she did not wish to speak for a little while.

“I hate to think that she has lain so long beside that gilded Roman monster,” said Malipieri presently.

The vast brutality of the herculean emperor had not disgusted him at first; it had merely displeased his taste.  Now, it became suddenly an atrocious contrast to the secret loveliness of unveiled beauty.  That was a manly instinct in him, too, and Sabina felt it.

“Yes,” she said softly.  “And she seems almost alive.”

“The gods and goddesses live for ever,” Malipieri answered, smiling and looking at her, in spite of himself.

Her eyes met his at once, and did not turn away.  He fancied that they grew darker in the shadow, and in the short silence.

“I suppose we ought to be going,” she said, still looking at him.  “Poor old Sassi is waiting in the cellar.”

“We have not been all round the vault yet,” he answered.  “There may be something more.”

“No, she has been alone with the monster, all these centuries.  I am sure of it.  There cannot be anything else.”

“We had better look, nevertheless,” said Malipieri.  “I want you to see everything there is, and you cannot come here again—­not in this way.”