"There it is again!" groaned Diagoras. "I feel exactly as if I were
playing at odd and even with a lion; she does it to vex me. I shall
retaliate and creep away."

"Cleonice," said Pausanias, with suppressed emotion, "you trifle with
me, and I bear it."

"You are condescending. How would you avenge yourself?"

"How!"

"You would not beat me; you would not make me bear an anchor on the
shoulders, as they say you do your soldiers. Shame on you! _you_ bear
with me! true, what help for you?"

"Maiden," said the Spartan, rising in great anger, "for him who loves
and is slighted there is a revenge you have not mentioned."

"For him who _loves!_ No, Spartan; for him who shuns disgrace and
courts the fame dear to gods and men, there is no revenge upon women.
Blush for your threat."

"You madden, but subdue me," said the Spartan as he turned away. He
then first perceived that Diagoras had gone--that they were alone.
His contempt for the father awoke suspicion of the daughter. Again he
approached and said, "Cleonice, I know but little of the fables of
poets, yet is it an old maxim often sung and ever belied, that love
scorned becomes hate. There are moments when I think I hate thee."