all you condemn me unheard, for you. . . . But why do you stand and look
like that? You look just like you did that time when I heard you sing.
By all the Muses! but you, too, like us, have some fire in your veins,
you are not one of the lukewarm sort; you are an artist, and a better one
than I; and if you ever should feel the right love, then--then take care
lest you break loose from propriety and custom--or whatever name you give
to the sacred powers that subdue passion--even more wildly than I--who am
an honest girl, and mean to remain so, for all the fire and flame in my
breast!"

Gorgo remembered the hour in which she had, in fact, proffered to the
man of her choice as a free gift, the love which, by every canon of
propriety, she ought only to have granted to his urgent wooing. She
blushed and her eyes fell before the humble little singer; but while she
was considering what answer she could make men's steps were heard
approaching, and presently Eusebius and Marcus entered the room, followed
by Gorgo's lover. Constantine was in deep dejection, for one of his
brothers had lost his life in the burning of his father's ship-yard, and
as compared with this grief, the destruction of the timber stores which
constituted the chief part of his wealth scarcely counted as a calamity.

Gorgo had met him with a doubtful and embarrassed air; but when she
learnt of the blow that had fallen on him and his parents, she clung to
him caressingly and tried to comfort him. The others sympathized deeply
with his sorrow; but soon it was Dada's turn to weep, for Eusebius
brought the news of her foster-parent's death in the fight at the
Serapeum, and of Orpheus being severely wounded.

The cheerful music-room was a scene of woe till Demetrius came to conduct
his brother and Dada to the widow Mary who was expecting them. He had