and surrounded, as it was, with sweet flowers, a heart could have been
beating in the deepest sadness? And, still more, who among all the
guests of that honored, admired Thracian woman, would have believed that
this sad heart belonged to her? to the gracious, smiling matron, Rhodopis
herself?

She was sitting with Phanes in a shady arbor near the cooling spray of a
fountain. One could see that she had been weeping again, but her face
was beautiful and kind as ever. The Athenian was holding her hand and
trying to comfort her.

Rhodopis listened patiently, and smiled the while; at times her smile was
bitter, at others it gave assent to his words. At last however she
interrupted her well-intentioned friend, by saying:

"Phanes, I thank you. Sooner or later this last disgrace must be
forgotten too. Time is clever in the healing art. If I were weak I
should leave Naukratis and live in retirement for my grandchild alone; a
whole world, believe me, lies slumbering in that young creature. Many
and many a time already I have longed to leave Egypt, and as often have
conquered the wish. Not because I cannot live without the homage of your
sex; of that I have already had more than enough in my life, but because
I feel that I, the slave-girl and the despised woman once, am now useful,
necessary, almost indispensable indeed, to many free and noble men.
Accustomed as I am, to an extended sphere of work, in its nature
resembling a man's, I could not content myself in living for one being
alone, however dear. I should dry up like a plant removed from a rich
soil into the desert, and should leave my grandchild desolate indeed,
three times orphaned, and alone in the world. No! I shall remain in
Egypt.