reast, fondled his hair. The
Greek, grateful, smiled fraternally on Bacchis, with indifference, as if
she were a child.

Two mariners came out from among the huts, and began to stagger along
the wharf. A penetrating howl, which seemed to cleave the air, sounded
close to Actaeon's ears. His companion, impelled by habit, with the
instinct of the vendor who sees a customer in the distance, had arisen
to her feet.

"I will return, my master. I had almost forgotten the terrible Lais. I
must give her her money before the sun rises. She will beat me as she
has done before if I do not fulfill my promise. Wait for me here."

Repeating her wild howl, she went in search of the sailors, who had
stopped, hailing the "she-wolf's" cries with loud laughter and obscene
words.

When the Greek found himself alone, his hunger placated, he felt a
certain disgust in thinking of his recent adventure. Actaeon the
Athenian, he for whom the richest hetaerae of the beautiful city used to
dispute in the Cerameicus, protected and adored by a strumpet of the
port! To avoid meeting her again he hurriedly left the temple steps,
losing himself in the streets by the harbor.

Again he stopped before the hostelry in the doorway of which he had
experienced the torment of hunger. The sailors were in the midst of an
orgy. The tavern keeper could barely command respect behind the
counter. The slaves, terrified by blows, had taken refuge in the
kitchen. Some amphorae lay broken on the floor letting the wine escape
like streams of blood, and the drunken men wallowed in the gurgling
liquid as it soaked into the earthen floor, calling for drinks of which
they had vaguely heard on distant voyages, or for fantastic dishes
conceived by the little tyrants of Asia. One Herculean Egyptian was
running on all fours imitating the growl of the jackal, and biting the
women who had entered the tavern. Some negroes were disporting with
feminine movements, as if hypnotized by the whirling of the umbilical
dance. In the corners, on the stone benches, men and women embraced in
the crude light of the torches; the smell of bare and sweaty flesh
mingled with the aroma of wine; in the atmosphere of viands and of
wild-beast odor, seamen, forgetting shame, committed crimes peculiar to
the aberration of the epoch.

In the midst of this disorder a few men stood motionless near the
counter, arguing with apparent calmness. They were two Roman soldiers,
an old Carthaginian mariner,