touching her hair at the folds with gold dust, gave command to the women
to dress her, following Lygia with delighted eyes meanwhile.

But she was ready soon; and when the first litters began to appear
before the main gate, both entered the side portico from which were
visible the chief entrance, the interior galleries, and the courtyard
surrounded by a colonnade of Numidian marble.

Gradually people passed in greater and greater numbers under the lofty
arch of the entrance, over which the splendid quadrigæ of Lysias seemed
to bear Apollo and Diana into space. Lygia's eyes were struck by that
magnificence, of which the modest house of Aulus could not have given
her the slightest idea. It was sunset; the last rays were falling on
the yellow Numidian marble of the columns, which shone like gold in
those gleams and changed into rose color also. Among the columns, at
the side of white statues of the Danaides and others, representing gods
or heroes, crowds of people flowed past,--men and women; resembling
statues also, for they were draped in togas, pepluses, and robes,
falling with grace and beauty toward the earth in soft folds, on which
the rays of the setting sun were expiring. A gigantic Hercules, with
head in the light yet, from the breast down sunk in shadow cast by the
columns, looked from above on that throng. Acte showed Lygia senators
in wide-bordered togas, in colored tunics, in sandals with crescents on
them, and knights, and famed artists; she showed her Roman ladies, in
Roman, in Grecian, in fantastic Oriental costume, with hair dressed in
towers or pyramids, or dressed like that of the statues of goddesses,
low on the head, and adorned with flowers. Many men and women did Acte
call by name, adding to their names histories, brief and sometimes
terrible, which pierced Lygia with fear, amazement, and wonder. For her
this was a strange world, whose beauty intoxicated her eyes, but whose