Part 26 (2/2)

”A mirror! a mirror! let her see herself!”

The slave brought a bronze mirror. ”No, not that one. The mirror of Rhodopis. She merits it.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chrysis sprang up with a bound. The blood spurted to her cheeks, then retired again, and she remained perfectly pale, with the beatings of her heart battering her breast, and her eyes fixed on the door through which the slave had disappeared.

That instant was to decide her whole life. Her last hope was either to vanish or be realised. The fete continued all around her. An iris wreath, thrown from somewhere or other, fell upon her lips. A man broke a little phial of perfume over her hair. It ran down too quickly and wetted her shoulders. The splashes of wine from a full tankard into which somebody had thrown a pomegranate spotted her silk tunic and penetrated to the skin. She bore all the traces of the orgie magnificently.

The slave who had gone out did not return.

Chrysis remained stone-pale, motionless as a sculptured G.o.ddess. The rhythmic and monotonous wail of a woman in travail of love not far away marked the pa.s.sage of time for her. It seemed to her that this woman had been moaning thus since the night before. She could have twisted something, broken her fingers, shouted.

At last Selene came back, empty-handed.

”The mirror?” asked Bacchis.

”It . . . It has gone . . . it . . . has been . . . stolen,” stammered the servant.

Bacchis uttered a cry so piercing that all ceased speaking, and a frightful silence brusquely interrupted the tumult.

Men and women crowded round her from all parts of the vast chamber, leaving a little s.p.a.ce in the centre which was occupied by the distracted Bacchis and the kneeling slave.

”What! What!” she shrieked.

And as Selene did not answer, she seized her violently by the neck:

”You have stolen it yourself! You have stolen it yourself! Answer, answer! I will loosen your tongue with the whip, miserable little b.i.t.c.h!”

Then a terrible thing happened. Beside herself with fear, the fear of suffering, the fear of death, the most instant terror she had ever known, the child exclaimed hurriedly:

”It is Aphrodisia! It is not I! it is not I!”

”Your sister!”

”Yes, yes,” said the mulatto woman; ”it is Aphrodisia who has taken it.”

And they dragged their sister, who had just fallen into a fainting fit, before Bacchis.

[1] Philodeme AP. V. 132.

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