s way to the
shore.

CHAPTER VII.

While Marcus was restlessly wandering on the shore of Mareotis, dreaming
of Dada's image and arranging speeches of persuasive eloquence by which
to touch her heart and appeal to her soul, silence had fallen on the
floating home of the singers. A light white mist, like a filmy veil--a
tissue of clouds and moonbeams--hung over the lake. Work was long since
over in the ship-yard, and the huge skeletons of the unfinished ships
threw weird and ghostly shadows on the silvered strand-forms like black
visions of crayfish, centipedes, or enormous spiders.

From the town there came not a sound; it lay in the silence of
intoxicated sleep. The Roman troops had cleared the streets, the lights
were dead in every house, and in all the alleys and squares; only the
moon shone over the roofs of Alexandria, while the blazing beacon of the
light-house on the north-eastern point of the island of Pharos shone like
a sun through the darkness.

In a large cabin in the stern of the vessel lay the two girls, on soft
woollen couches and covered with rugs. Agne was gazing wide-eyed into the
darkness; Dada had long been asleep, but she breathed painfully and her
rosy lips were puckered now and then as if she were in some distress. She
was dreaming of the infuriated mob who had snatched the garland from her
hair--she saw Marcus suddenly interfere to protect her and rescue her
from her persecutors--then she thought she had fallen off the gangway
that led from the land to the barge, and was in the water while old Damia
stood on the shore and laughed at her without trying to help her. Night
generally brought the child sound sleep or pleasant dreams, but now one
hideous face after another haunted her.

And yet the evening had brought her a great pleasure. Not long after
their return from their walk the steward had come down to the boat and
brought her a very beautiful dress, with greetings from his old mistress;
he had at the same time brought an Egyptian slave-woman, well skilled in
all the arts of the toilet, who was to wait upon her so long as she
remained in Alexandria. Dada had never owned such a lovely dress! The
under-robe was of soft sea-green bombyx silk, with a broad border,
delicately embroidered, of a garland of roses and buds. The peplos was of
the same color and decorated to match; costly clasps of mosaic,
representing full-blown roses and set in oval gold settings, fastened it
on the shoulder