whom she loved, whom she held involuntarily as a kind of demigod, was as
pitiful as any slave, and that palace, with columns of Numidian marble,
no better than a heap of stones. At last, however, those feelings which
she had not power to define began to torment her; she wanted to sleep,
but being tortured by alarm she could not. Thinking that Lygia,
threatened by so many perils and uncertainties, was not sleeping either,
she turned to her to speak of her flight in the evening. But Lygia was
sleeping calmly. Into the dark cubiculum, past the curtain which was
not closely drawn, came a few bright rays, in which golden dust-motes
were playing. By the light of these rays Acte saw her delicate face,
resting on her bare arm, her closed eyes, and her mouth slightly open.
She was breathing regularly, but as people breathe while asleep.

"She sleeps,--she is able to sleep," thought Acte. "She is a child
yet." Still, after a while it came to her mind that that child chose to
flee rather than remain the beloved of Vinicius; she preferred want to
shame, wandering to a lordly house, to robes, jewels, and feasts, to the
sound of lutes and citharas.

"Why?"

And she gazed at Lygia, as if to find an answer in her sleeping face.
She looked at her clear forehead, at the calm arch of her brows, at her
dark tresses, at her parted lips, at her virgin bosom moved by calm
breathing; then she thought again,--"How different from me!"

Lygia seemed to her a miracle, a sort of divine vision, something
beloved of the gods, a hundred times more beautiful than all the flowers
in Cæsar's garden, than all the statues in his palace. But in the Greek
woman's heart there was no envy. On the contrary, at thought of the