travellers and merchants, like her mother. Yet she inspired interminable passions. Caravan-masters were known to sell their merchandise dirt cheap in order to stay with her, and ruin themselves in a few nights. With these men's fortune she bought jewels, bed-cushions, rare perfumes, flowered robes, and four slaves.

She gained a knowledge of many foreign languages, and knew the tales of all countries. Assyrians told her the loves of Douzi and Ishtar; Phœnicians those of Ashtaroth and Adonis. Greek harlots from the isles told her the legend of Iphis, and taught her strange caresses which surprised her at first, but afterwards enchanted her so much that she could not do without them for a whole day. She also knew the loves of Atalanta, and how, like her, flute-girls, while yet virgins, may tire out the strongest men. Finally, her Hindoo slave had taught her patiently, during seven years, the minutest details of the complex and voluptuous art of the courtesans of Palibothra.

For love is an art, like music. It gives emotions of the same order, equally delicate, equally thrilling, sometimes perhaps more intense; and Chrysis, who knew all its rhythms and all its subtilities, regarded herself, with good reason, as a greater artist than Plango herself. Yet Plango was a musician of the temple.

Seven years she lived thus, without dreaming of a life happier or more varied. But shortly before her twentieth year, when she emerged from girlhood to womanhood and saw the first charming line of nascent maturity take form under her breasts, she suddenly conceived other ambitions.

And one morning, waking up two hours alter mid-day, languid with too much sleep, she turned over upon her breast, threw out her legs, leaned her cheek upon her hand, and with a long golden pin, pricked little symmetrical holes upon her pillow of green linen.

Her reflexions were profound.

First it was four little pricks which made a square, with a prick in the centre. Then four other pricks to make a bigger square. Then she tried to make a circle. But it was a little difficult. Then, she pricked away aimlessly and began to call:

"Djala! Djala!"

Djala was her Hindoo slave, and was called Djalantachtchandratchapala, which means: "Mobile as the image of the moon upon the water." Chrysis was too lazy to say the whole name.

The slave entered and stood near the door, without entirely closing it.

"Who came yesterday, Djala?"

"You do not know?"

"No, I did not look. He was handsome? I think I slept all the time; I was tired. I remember nothing at all about it. At what time did he go away? This morning early?"

"At sunrise, he said—"

"What did he leave me? Is it much? No, don't tell me. It's all the same to me. What did he say? Has no one been since? Will he come back again? Give me my bracelets."

The slave brought a casket, but Chrysis did not look at it, and, raising her arm as high as she could:

"Ah! Djala," she said, "ah! Djala! I long for extraordinary adventures."

"Everything is extraordinary," said Djala, "or nought. The days resemble one another."

"No, no. Formerly it was not like that. In all the countries of the world gods came down to earth and loved mortal women. Ah! on what beds await them, in what forest search for them that are a little more than men? What prayers shall I put up for the coming of them that will teach me something new or oblivion of all things? And if the gods will no longer come down, if they are dead or too old, Djala, shall I too die without seeing a man capable of putting tragic events into my life?"

She turned over upon her back and interlocked her fingers.

"If somebody adored me, I think it would give me such joy to make him suffer till he died. Those who come here are not worthy to weep. And then, it is my fault as well: it is I who summon them; how should they love me?"

"What bracelet to-day?"

"I shall put them all on. But leave me. I need no one. Go to the steps before the door, and if anyone comes, say that I am with my lover, a black slave whom I pay. Go."

"You are not going out?"

"Yes, I shall go out alone. I shall dress myself alone. I shall not return. Off with you! Off with you!"

She let one leg drop upon the carpet and stretched herself into a standing posture. Djala had gone away noiselessly.

She walked very slowly about the room, with her hands crossed behind her neck, entirely absorbed in the luxury of cooling the sweat of her naked feet by stepping about on the tiles. Then she entered her bath.

It was a delight to her to look at herself through the water. She saw herself like a great pearl-shell lying open on a rock. Her skin became smooth and perfect; the lines of her legs tapered away into blue light; her whole form was more supple; her hands were transfigured. The lightness of her body was such that she raised herself on two fingers and allowed herself to float for a little and fall gently back on the marble, causing the water to ripple softly against her chin. The water entered her ears with the provocation of a kiss.

It was when taking her bath that Chrysis began to adore herself. Every part of her body became separately the object of tender admiration and the motive of a caress. She played a thousand charming pranks with her hair and her breasts. Sometimes, even, she accorded a more direct satisfaction to her perpetual desires, and no place of repose seemed to her more propitious for the minute slowness of this delicate solace.

The day was waning. She sat up in the piscina, stepped out of the water, and walked to the door. Her foot-marks shone upon the stones. Tottering, and as if exhausted, she opened the door wide and stopped, holding the latch at arm's length; then entered, and, standing upright near her bed, and dripping with water, said to the slave:

"Dry me."

The Malabar woman took a large sponge and passed it over Chrysis's golden hair, which, being heavily charged with water, dripped streams down her back. She dried it, smoothed it out, waved it gently to and fro, and, dipping the sponge into a jar of oil, she caressed her mistress with it even to the neck. She then rubbed her down with a rough towel which brought the colour to her supple skin.

Chrysis sank quivering into the coolness of a marble chair and murmured:

"Dress my hair."

In the level rays of evening her hair, still heavy and humid, shone like rain illuminated by the sun: The slave took it in handfuls and entwined it. She rolled it into a spiral and picked it out with slim golden pins, like a great metal serpent bristling with arrows. She wound the whole around a triple fillet of green in order that its reflections might be heightened by the silk.

Chrysis held a mirror of polished copper at arm's length. She watched the slave's darting hands with a distracted eye, as she passed them through the heavy hair, rounded off the clusters, captured the stray locks, and built up her head-dress like a spiral rhytium of clay. When all was finished, Djala knelt down on her knees before her mistress and shaved her rounded flesh to the skin, in order that she might have the nudity of a statue in her lovers' eyes.

Chrysis became graver and said in a low voice:

"Paint me."

A little pink box from the island of Dioscoris contained cosmetics of all colours. With a camel-hair brush, the slave took a little of a certain black paste which she laid upon the long curves of the beautiful eye-lashes, in order to heighten the blueness of the eyes. Two firm lines put on with a pencil imparted increased length and softness to them; a bluish powder tinted the eye-lids the colour of lead; two touches of bright vermilion accentuated the tear-corners. In order to fix the cosmetics, it was necessary to anoint the face and