"And the Arachne?" asked the maid. This was an opportune question to the
slave--how often he had heard the artists utter the word "Arachne!"--and
his pride of education had suffered from the consciousness that he knew
nothing about her except the name, which in Greek meant "the spider."

Some special story must surely be associated with this Arachne, for which
his master desired to use his young countrywoman, Ledscha, as a model,
and whose statues Archias intended to place in his house in Alexandria
and in the great weaving establishment at Tennis beside the statue of
Demeter.

Stephanion, a Greek woman who grew up in a Macedonian household, must
know something about her.

So he cautiously turned the conversation to the spinner Arachne, and when
Stephanion entered into it, admitted that he, too, was curious to learn
in what way the sculptors would represent her.

"Yes," replied the maid, "my mistress has more than once racked her
brains over that, and Archias too. Perhaps they will carve her as a girl
at work in the house of her father Idmon, the purple dyer of Colophon."

"Never," replied Bias in a tone of dissent. "Just imagine how the loom
would look wrought in gold and ivory!"

"I thought so too," said Stephanion, in apology for the foolish idea."
Daphne thinks that the two will model her in different ways: Myrtilus,
as mistress in the weaving room, showing with proud delight a piece just
completed to the nymphs from the Pactolus and other rivers, who sought
her at Colophon to admire her work; but Hermon, after she aroused the