began to pluck the flowers, smelling them with delight. She imagined
herself in Athens, in the garden on the Street of Tripods, listening to
her poet who had initiated her into the sweet mysteries of art and love.
And she gazed sweetly at Actaeon, with frank and sincere passion, with
the submission of a slave, saying "I love you" with her eyes, as if only
awaiting a word to fall into his arms.

The breeze lightly stirred the whole garden. Bits of purple sky inflamed
by the setting sun could be seen through the foliage. A mysterious
penumbra began to form beneath the trees. The sounds from the fields,
the stirring of the people outside the villa in the houses of the
slaves, and even the cries of the exotic birds on the terrace seemed to
come from a distant world.

Between two clumps of rose bushes stood an image of Priapos carved from
the trunk of a tree. The rustic god was smiling with a lewd expression,
arching his hairy breast and thrusting his abdomen forward.

Sonnica smiled on seeing the Athenian looking at him.

"You know that it is an ancient custom to place the gardens under the
protection of Priapos," said Sonnica. "They say that he frightens away
thieves. My slaves believe it firmly, and I keep the god as a symbol of
life in the midst of these roses, which are as beautiful as those of
Paestum. The allurements of Priapos complete the sweet charm of abounding
Nature."

The two Greeks walked on in silence, with slow step, along an avenue of
slender cypresses at the end of which opened a grotto, its rocky walls
draped with ivy, allowing a greenish, diffused light to filter through
its openings. A white cupid spilled from a shell a stream of water like
tender falling tear-drops, caught in an alabaster basin. There the
luxurious Sonnica spent the warmer part of the day.

Actaeon was conscious of a soft, warm touch upon his shoulder.

"Sonnica!"

Caressing her around her gold-encircled waist, her white and satiny arms
knotted themselves responsive about his neck like ivory serpents; her
head fell upon the shoulder of the Greek, who, looking down, saw fixed
upon him a pair of violet eyes moist with ecstatic emotion.

"You are Athens come back to me!" She murmured sweetly, with bated
breath. "When I met you this morning on the steps of Aphrodite's temple
I thought you must be Apollo descended to earth. I felt the Olympian
fire, impossible to resist. Long have I scorned love, but at last the
little god is ave