ting his reply.

"They tell me he is dead; even I saw him lying at the foot of the walls;
but it is not true; it was a bad dream. It was his father, Mopsus the
archer, who died. Since then he runs away from me as if he wishes to
weep alone for his father's death. He hides from me by day. I see him
from afar, upon the walls, among the defenders, but when I climb up to
search for him I find none but armed men, and Erotion disappears. He is
only faithful to me at night. Then he seeks me, he comes to me. Scarcely
do I conceal myself at the foot of the stairway and rest my head upon my
knees than I see him coming, looking for me in the darkness, strong and
loving, with his quiver at his side and his bow slung across his
shoulders. When he comes the ferocious dogs which slink through the
shadows, sniffing in my face and staring at me with their gloomy eyes,
are frightened away. He comes to me, he sits beside me; he smiles, but
he is ever silent. I speak to him and he answers me with a tender
glance, but never with a word. I seek his shoulder, to lean my head upon
it as in other days, and he flees, he disappears as if dissolved in
shadow. What does it mean, good Greek? If you see him, ask him why he
hides from me. Tell him not to run away!----He loves you so much, so
much! How often has he talked to me of you and of your country!"

She was silent a moment, as if these words had aroused within her a
whole past of recollections. With a painful effort, which was reflected
in her face, she caught at them and arranged them in her mind. Slowly
surged through her memory again the image of those happy days before the
siege when she and Erotion ran hand in hand through the valley and had
for their house all the groves of the Saguntine domain.

She smiled at Actaeon, looking at him affectionately, and she recalled
their several meetings; their first interview on the Road of the Serpent
when he had just disembarked, poor and unknown. Then, the touch of
paternal protection with which he greeted them when he found them in the
fields climbing the cherry trees and quarreling playfully over the red
fruit, and that surprise beneath the leafy fig trees, when she, in her
virginal beauty, was acting as a model for the young sculptor. Did he
remember? Had the Greek forgotten those days of peace and joy?

Actaeon did indeed cherish them in his memory. He still retained the
impression caused by the vision of the lovely shepherdess, and at the
sam