o
I was taught. But what, I ask myself, when I think of the stones which
were flung at Hermon's struggling Maenads, could be less suited for
imitation than two women, one of whom strikes the other?"

"The woman who in her desperation at that blow desires to hang herself,
must produce a still more horrible impression," replied Stephanion.
"Probably she will be represented as Athene releases her from the noose
rather than when, as a punishment for her insolence, she transforms
Arachne into a spider."

"That she might be permitted, in the form of an insect, to make artistic
webs until the end of her life," the slave, now sufficiently well
informed, added importantly. "Since that transformation, as you know,
the spider has been called by the Greeks Arachne. Perhaps--I always
thought so--Hermon will represent her twisting the rope with which she
is to kill herself. You have seen many of our works, and know that we
love the terrible."

"Oh, let me go into your studio!" the maid now entreated no less
urgently than her mistress had done a short time before, but her wish,
too, remained ungratified.

"The sculptors," Bias truthfully asserted, "always kept their workrooms
carefully locked." They were as inaccessible as the strongest fortress,
and it was wise, less on account of curious spectators, from whom there
was nothing to fear, than of the thievish propensities of the
people. The statues, by Archias's orders, were to be executed in
chryselephantine work, and the gold and ivory which this required might
only too easily awaken the vice of cupidity in the honest and frugal
Biamites. So nothing could be done about it, not to mention the fact
that he was forbidden, on pain of being sold to work in a stone quarry,
to open the studio to any one without his master's consent.

So the maid, too, was obliged to submit, and the sacrifice was rendered
easier for her because, just at that moment, a young female slave called
her back to the tent where Chrysilla, Daphne's companion, a matron who
belonged to a distinguished Greek family, needed her services.

Bias, rejoicing that he had at last learned, without exposing his own
ignorance, the story of the much-discussed Arachne, returned to the
house, where he remained until Daphne came back from shooting with
her companions. While the latter were talking about the birds they had
killed, Bias went out of doors; but he was forced to give up his desire
to listen to a conversation which