nt in the groves of the Academy."

They went out of the house and strolled along a winding avenue bordered
by tall laurels, above which peeped the tops of banana trees, irrigated
with wine to accelerate their growth. On the terrace two peacocks hailed
them with strident calls, strutting along the balustrade and spreading
their majestic tails.

Actaeon, on beholding his beautiful protectress in the light of the sun,
felt a thrill of desire rush through his body. She wore as her only
covering a Grecian chiton, an open tunic, fastened with metal clasps
over the shoulders, and secured around the waist by a golden girdle. The
arms emerged bare from the white wrapping, and the left side of the
tunic, closed from the armpit to the knee by small brooches, half opened
at each step, revealing her pearly nudity. The material was so delicate
that its transparency displayed the outlines of her rosy body, which
seemed to float in a veil of woven foam.

"Does my dress astonish you, Actaeon?"

"No; I admire you. You seem to me Aphrodite surging from the waves. It
is a long time since I have seen the women of Athens disclosing their
divine beauty. I am corrupted by my travels, through the rude customs of
the barbarians."

"It may happen so. As Herodotus says, nearly all who are not Greeks
consider it opprobrious to appear nude.--If you only knew how
scandalized the people of this city were in the beginning at my Athenian
customs!--as if there existed anything more beautiful in the world than
the human form!--as if the nude were not the supreme beauty! I adore
Phryne, astonishing with her nude body the old men of the Areopagus;
making the thousands of pilgrims gathered on the Eleusinian strand shout
with enthusiasm when they saw her white form surge from among the veils,
like the moon from behind the clouds. I believe in the promise of her
bosom more than in the power of the gods."

"Do you doubt the gods?" asked Actaeon, with his fine Athenian smile.

"The same as do you and all those from _there_. The gods now serve only
as themes for artists, and if they are tolerated in old Homer, it is
because he was skilled in celebrating their quarrels in graceful verse.
No; I do not believe in them; they are as simple and credulous as
children, but I love them because they are sane and beautiful."

"In what do you believe, then, Sonnica?"

"I do not know--in something mysterious that surrounds us and animates
life; I believe in beauty a