But Gorgo turned upon her at once:

"Indeed, grandmother," she exclaimed, quivering with rage, "but we have!
He is a soldier and must do his duty; but he is fondly attached to us."

"Us, us?" retorted the old woman with a laugh. "Has he sworn love to
you, let me ask? Has he? and you-do you believe him, simple fool? I
know him, I know him! Why, for a scrap of bread and a drop of wine from
the hand of his priest he would see you and all of us plunged into
misery! But see, here are the messengers."

Porphyrius gave his instructions to the young men who now entered the
hall, hurried them off, clasped Gorgo in a tender embrace and then bent
over his mother to kiss her--a thing he had not done for many a day.
Old Damia laid aside her stick, and taking her son's face in both her
withered hands, muttered a few words which were half a fond appeal and
half a magical formula, and then the women were alone. For a long while
both were silent. The old woman sat sunk in her arm-chair while Gorgo
stood with her back against the pedestal of a bust of Plato, gazing
meditatively at the ground. At last it was Damia who spoke, asking to be
carried into the women's rooms.

Gorgo, however, stopped her with a gesture, went close to her and said:
"No, wait a minute, mother; first you must hear what I have to say."

"What you have to say?" asked her grandmother, shrugging her shoulders.

"Yes. I have never deceived you; but one thing I have hitherto concealed
from you because I was never till this morning sure of it myself--now I
am. Now I know that I love him."