he spent his nights in rioting with flute-playing women. Yes, Semestre
had said so. He seemed to Xanthe lost, utterly lost.

When she wept in the morning beside the spring, it was not, she now
thought, because of the heiress from Messina; no, the tears that had
sprung to her eyes were like those a mother sheds for her erring son.

She seemed to herself extremely venerable, and would have thought it only
natural if gray hair instead of golden had adorned the head over which
scarcely seventeen years had passed.

She even assumed the gait of a dignified matron, but it was hardly like a
mother, when, on her way to the rose-bushes by the sea, she studiously
strove to misunderstand and pervert everything good in Phaon, and call
his quiet nature indolence, his zeal to be useful to her weakness, his
taciturn manner mere narrow-mindedness, and even his beautiful, dreamy
eyes sleepy.

With all this, the young girl found little time to think of the new
suitor; she must first shatter the old divine image, but every blow of
the hammer hurt her as if it fell upon herself.




CHAPTER VI.

The rose-bush to which Xanthe went grew on the dike that belonged in
common to her father and uncle, beside a bench of beautifully-polished
white marble.