not right, dearest—I may expect you this evening? Just this once let the daughter of Archias yield to me, who loves you better. We shall have a full moon to-night, and you have heard what was predicted to me—to-night the highest bliss which the gods can bestow upon a mortal awaits me.”
“And me also,” cried Hermon, “if you will permit me to share it with you.”
“Then I will expect you on the Pelican Island—just when the full moon is over the lofty poplars there. You will come? Not to the Owl’s Nest: to the Pelican Island. And though your love is far less, far cooler than mine, yet you will not defraud me of the best happiness of my life?”
“How could I?” he asked, as if he felt wounded by such distrust. “What detains me must be something absolutely unavoidable.”
Ledscha’s eyebrows contracted sharply, and in a choked voice she exclaimed: “Nothing must detain you—nothing, whatever it may be! Though death should threaten, you will be with me just at midnight.”
“I will, if it is possible,” he protested, painfully touched by the vehemence of her urging. “What can be more welcome to me also than to spend happy hours with you in the silence of a moonlight night? Besides, my stay in Tennis will not be long.”
“You are going?” she asked in a hollow tone.
“In three or four days,” he answered carelessly; “then Myrtilus and I will be expected in Alexandria. But gently—gently—how pale you are, girl! Yes, the parting! But in six weeks at latest I shall be here again; then real life will first begin, and Eros will make the roses bloom for us.”
Ledscha nodded silently, and gazing into his face with a searching look asked, “And how long will this season of blossoming last?”
“Several months, girl; three, if not six.”
“And then?”
“Who looks so far into the future?”
She lowered her glance, and, as if yielding to the inevitable, answered: “What a fool I was! Who knows what the morrow may bring? Are we even sure whether, six months hence, we shall not hate, instead of loving, each other?”
She passed her hand across her brow as she spoke, exclaiming: “You said just now that only the present belonged to man. Then let us enjoy it as though every moment might be the last. By the light of the full moon to-night, the happiness which has been predicted to me must begin. After it, the orb between the horns of Astarte will become smaller; but when it fulls and wanes again, if you keep your promise and return, then, though they may curse and condemn me, I will come to your studio and grant what you ask. But which of the goddesses do you intend to model from me as a companion statue to the Demeter?”
“This time it can not be one of the immortelles,” he answered hesitatingly, “but a famous woman, an artist who succeeded in a competition in vanquishing even the august Athene.”
“So it is no goddess?” Ledscha asked in a disappointed tone.
“No, child, but the most skilful woman who ever plied the weaver’s shuttle.”
“And her name?”
“Arachne.”
The young girl started, exclaiming contemptuously: “Arachne? That is—that is what you Greeks call the most repulsive of creatures—the spider.”
“The most skilful of all creatures, that taught man the noble art of weaving,” he eagerly retorted.
Here he was interrupted; his friend Myrtilus put his fair head into the room, exclaiming: “Pardon me if I interrupt you—but we shall not see each other again for some time. I have important business in the city, and may be detained a long while. Yet before I go I must perform the commission Daphne gave me for you. She sends word that she shall expect you without fail at the banquet for the Pelusinian guests. Your absence, do you hear?—pardon the interruption, fairest Ledscha—your absence would seriously anger her.”
“Then I shall be prepared for considerable trouble in appeasing her,” replied Hermon, glancing significantly at the young girl.
Myrtilus crossed the threshold, turned to the Biamite, and said in his quiet, cheerful manner: “Where beautiful gifts are to be brought to Eros, it beseems the friend to strew with flowers the path of the one who is offering the sacrifices; and you, if everything does not deceive me, would fain choose to-night to serve him with the utmost devotion. Therefore, I shall need forgiveness from you and the god, if I beseech you to defer the offering, were it only until to-morrow.”
Ledscha silently shrugged her shoulders and made no answer to the inquiring glance with which Hermon sought hers, but Myrtilus changed his tone and addressed a grave warning to his friend to consider well that it would be an insult to the manes of his dead parents if he should avoid the old couple from Pelusium, who had been their best friends and had taken the journey hither for his sake.
Hermon looked after him in painful perplexity, but the Biamite also approached the threshold, and holding her head haughtily erect, said coldly: “The choice is difficult for you, as I see. Then recall to your memory again what this night of the full moon means—you are well aware of it—to me. If, nevertheless, you still decide in favour of the banquet with your friends, I can not help it; but I must now know: Shall this night belong to me, or to the daughter of Archias?”
“Is it impossible to talk with you, unlucky girl, as one would with other sensible people?” Hermon burst forth wrathfully. “Everything is carried to extremes; you condemn a brief necessary delay as breach of faith and base treachery. This behaviour is unbearable.”
“Then you will not come?” she asked apathetically, laying her hand upon the door; but Hermon cried out in a tone half beseeching, half imperious: “You must not go so! If you insist upon it, surely I will come. There is no room in your obstinate soul for kind indulgence. No one, by the dog, ever accused me of being specially skilled in this smooth art; yet there may be duties and circumstances—”
Here Ledscha gently opened the door; but, seized with a fear of losing this rare creature, whose singular beauty attracted him powerfully, even now, this peerless model for a work on which he placed the highest hopes, he strode swiftly to her side, and drawing her back from the threshold, exclaimed: “Difficult as it is for me on this special day, I will come, only you must not demand what is impossible. The right course often lies midway. Half the night must belong to the banquet with my old friends and Daphne; the second half—”
“To the barbarian, you think—the spider,” she gasped hoarsely. “But my welfare as well as yours depends on the decision. Stay here, or come to the island—you have your choice.”
Wrenching herself from his hold as she spoke, she slipped through the doorway and left the room.
Hermon, with a muttered oath, stood still, shrugging his shoulders angrily.
He could do nothing but yield to this obstinate creature’s will.
In the atrium Ledscha met the slave Bias, and returned his greeting only by a wave of the hand; but before opening the side door which was to lead her into the open air, she paused, and asked bluntly in the language of their people: “Was Arachne—I don’t mean the spider, but the weaver whom the Greeks call by that name—a woman like the rest of us? Yet it is said that she remained victor in a contest with the goddess Athene.”
“That
