t confidence, the answer rang from the
Biamite's lips: "There the slanderer stands revealed! Now you are
detected, now I perceive the meaning of your threat. Because, miserable
slave, you cherish the mad hope of beguiling me yourself, you do your
utmost to estrange me from your master. Gula, you say, visited Hermon in
his studio, and it may be true. But though I have been at home only a
short time, Tennis is too full of the praises of the heroic Greek who, at
the risk of his own life, rescued a child from Paseth's burning house,
for the tale not to reach my ears from ten or a dozen different quarters.
Gula is the mother of the little girl whose life was saved by Hermon's
bold deed, and perhaps the young mother only knocked at her benefactor's
door to thank him; but you, base defamer--"

"I," Bias continued, maintaining his composure with difficulty, "I saw
Gula secretly glide into our rooms again and again to permit her child's
preserver to imitate in clay what he considered beautiful. To seek your
love, as you know, the slave forbade himself, although a man no more
loses tender desires with his freedom than the tree which is encircled by
a fence ceases to put forth buds and blossoms. Eros chooses the slave's
heart also as the target for his arrows; but his aim at yours was better
than at mine. Now I know how deeply he wounds, and so, as soon as yonder
ship in the harbour bears our visitor away again, I shall see you,
Schalit's daughter, Ledscha, standing before Hermon's modelling table and
behold him scan your beauty to determine what seems worth copying."

The Biamite, panting for breath, had listened to the end. Then, raising
her little clinched hand menacingly, she muttered through her set teeth:
"Let him try even to touch my veil with his fingers! If I had not been
obliged to go away, this would not have happened to my Taus and luckless
Gula."

"Scarcely," replied Bias calmly. "If the chicken runs into the water, the
hen can not save it. For the rest--I grew up as a boy in freedom with the
husband of your sister, who summoned you to her aid. His father's
brick-kiln was next to our papyrus plantation. Then we fared like so many
others--the great devour the small, the just cause is the lost one, and
the gods are like men. My father, who drew the sword against oppression
and violence, was robbed of liberty, and your brother-in-law, in payment
for his honest courage, met an early death. Is the story which is told of