by the children who could not be left
untended at night. Her female slave, who had been in her grandmother's
service, ought to have assisted her; but the old half-blind negress
saw even worse by lamp-light than by daylight, and after a few stitches
could do no more. Selene sent her to bed and sat down alone to her work.

For the first hour she sewed away without looking up, considering,
meanwhile, how she could best contrive to support the family till the
end of the month on the few drachmae she could dispose of. As it got
later she grew wearier and wearier, but still she sat at the work,
though her pretty head often sank upon her breast. She must await her
father's return, for a potion prepared by the physician stood waiting
for him, and she feared he would forget it if she did not remind him.

By the end of the second hour sleep overcame her, and she felt as if
the chair she was sitting on was giving way under her, and as if it was
sinking at first slowly and then quicker and quicker, into a deep abyss
that opened beneath her. Looking up for help in her dream, she could see
nothing but her father's face, which looked aside with indifference. As
her dream went on she called him and called him again, but for a long
time he did not seem to hear her. At last he looked down at her and
when he perceived her he smiled, but instead of helping her he picked up
stones and clods from the edge of the gulf and threw them on her hands
with which she had clutched the brambles and roots that grew out of the
rift of the rocks. She entreated him to cease, implored him, shrieked
to him to spare her, but not a muscle moved in the face above her; it
seemed set in a vacant smile, and even his heart was dead too, for he
ruthlessly flung down now a pebble, now a clod, one after the other,
till her hands were losing their last feeble hold and she was on the
point of falling into the fatal gulf below. Her own cry of terror
aroused her, but during the brief process of returning from her dream to
actuality, she saw through swiftly parting mists--only for an instant,
and yet quite plainly--the tall grass of a meadow, spangled with
ox-eye daisies, white and gold, with violet-hued blue bells and scarlet
poppies, among which she was lying--as in a soft green bed, while
near the sward lay a sparkling blue lake and behind it rose beautiful
swelling hills, with red cliffs, and green groves, and meadows bright in
the clear sunshine. A clear sky, across