village with the eyes of a slave-dealer.

"If you insist on speaking to Dionea," I said, "I shall insist on
speaking to her at the same time, to urge her to refuse your proposal."
But Waldemar's pale wife was indifferent to all my speeches about
modesty being a poor girl's only dowry. "She will do for a Venus," she
merely answered.

We went up to the cliffs together, after some sharp words, Waldemar's
wife hanging on my arm as we slowly clambered up the stony path among
the olives. We found Dionea at the door of her hut, making faggots of
myrtle-branches. She listened sullenly to Gertrude's offer and
explanations; indifferently to my admonitions not to accept. The
thought of stripping for the view of a man, which would send a shudder
through our most brazen village girls, seemed not to startle her,
immaculate and savage as she is accounted. She did not answer, but sat
under the olives, looking vaguely across the sea. At that moment
Waldemar came up to us; he had followed with the intention of putting
an end to these wranglings.

"Gertrude," he said, "do leave her alone. I have found a model--a
fisher-boy, whom I much prefer to any woman."

Dionea raised her head with that serpentine smile. "I will come," she
said.

Waldemar stood silent; his eyes were fixed on her, where she stood
under the olives, her white shift loose about her splendid throat, her
shining feet bare in the grass. Vaguely, as if not knowing what he
said, he asked her name. She answered that her name was Dionea; for the