h; or perhaps it was that when Chios, the Greek, came to visit the
Romans, he spoke kindly to the slave, and thus Nika detested her. It may
be so.

Passing by the great theatre and the Odeum, she went up the shaded way
over the side of Mount Coressus, and came to the beautiful home of
Venusta, passed in laden with fruit and flowers, great clusters of
sweet-scented blossoms falling from the basket as she raised it from her
head. For a moment she stood as in a dream, with girdled drapery falling
to her feet, and her gaze firmly fixed upon the great temple appearing
full in view as she looked through the window, which allowed the
sunlight to penetrate into her room.

That night, when her work was done, she mounted the marble steps
surrounding the house, and breathed the pleasant, perfumed air which
came down the mountain-side and danced through the myrtle groves.

The moon had well-nigh reached her meridian and sent forth her pale,
cool light, bathing the city in its glory, making the great hills look
so strange and lonely, as star after star struggled to show their
quivering rays; but the light of the Queen of Heaven, the great Moon
Goddess, absorbed them all.

'Twas then the spirit of the girl was moved, and she said to herself:

'Ah! what am I, most Holy Mother, most chaste Luna, great Orb which
symbols forth all Nature's mother, thou great Ashtoreth whom I was
taught to adore in childhood when in Sidon? Well do I remember when I
raised my tiny hand and kissed it unto thee. And they tell me here,
also, thou art the same mother, but under another name; that in Ionia
they call thee Diana instead of Ashtoreth, and that yonder mighty temple
is thy dwelling-place, around whose sacred pillars spreads a sanctuary
where those who flee are safe. Holy Mother! May I flee to thee? They say
even a slave may come to thy sanctuary, and once there with a just
cause, is ever safe from the fiercest Roman or the rudest Greek.'

And thus she spoke until a flock of night-birds flew along and like a
cloud obscured the moon, and a voice, sounding like a silver lute,
seemed to say:

'My face is veiled with earth-born things; those birds are dark to thee,
but every wing before my gaze is tipped with light and silver sheened.
So shalt thou see thy sorrows when thou fully knowest me.'

CHAPTER II

THE MESSENGER OF EROS

The great theatre at Ephesus was thronged; over fifty thousan