about this, but Gorgo was content to press her no further, and
when, after leaving the house, she had summoned up courage to refuse to
enter the Temple of Isis, Karnis had only said: "Be thankful that this
gifted lady, the favorite of the Muses, should think you worthy to sing
with her. We will see about the rest by-and-bye."

Now, in the watches of the sleepless night, she saw clearly the abyss
above which she was standing. She, like Judas, was on the point of
betraying her Saviour; not indeed for money, but in obedience to the
transient sound of an earthly voice, for the pleasure of exercising her
art, to indulge a hastily-formed liking; nay, perhaps because it
satisfied her childish vanity to find herself put on an equality with a
lady of rank and wealth, and matched with a singer who had roused Karnis
and Orpheus to such ardent admiration.

She was an enigma to herself; while passages out of the Bible crowded on
her memory to reproach her conscience.

There lay Dada's embroidered dress. Worn for the first time this day, in
a month it would be unpresentably shabby and then, ere long, flung aside
as past wearing. Like this--just like this--was every earthly pleasure,
every joy of this brief existence. Alas, she certainly was not happy here
in Karnis' sense of the word; but in the other world there were joys
eternal, and she had only to deny herself the petty enjoyments of this
life to secure unfailing and everlasting happiness in the next. There she
would find an endless flow of all her soul could desire, there perhaps
she might be allowed to cool the lips of Gorgo, as Lazarus cooled those
of the rich man.

She was quite clear now what her answer would be to-morrow, and, firmly
resolved not to allow herself to think of singing in the Temple of Isis,
she at last fell asleep just as the light began to dawn in the east. She
did not wake till late, and it was with downcast eyes and set lips that
she went with Karnis and Orpheus to the house of Porphyrius.

CHAPTER VIII.

When the steward went to summons the musicians to his master's house he
had again had no bidding for Dada, and she was very indignant at being
left behind. "That old cornsack's daughter," she said, "was full of her
airs, and would have nothing to say to them excepting to make use of them
for her own purposes!" If she had not been afraid of being thought
intrusive she would have acted on old Damia's invitation to visit her
frequently, and have