could not sleep. For a long time she had been sad and unhappy, but now
she was seized by a certain uneasiness which she had never felt before.
So far life had seemed to her simply grievous and deprived of a morrow;
now all at once it seemed to her dishonorable.

Increasing chaos rose in her head. Again the door to light began to open
and close. But in the moment when it opened, that light so dazzled her
that she could see nothing distinctly. She divined, merely, that in that
light there was happiness of some kind, happiness beyond measure, in
presence of which every other was nothing, to such a degree that if
Caesar, for example, were to set aside Poppaea, and love her, Acte, again,
it would be vanity. Suddenly the thought came to her that that Caesar
whom she loved, whom she held involuntarily as a kind of demigod, was as
pitiful as any slave, and that palace, with columns of Numidian marble,
no better than a heap of stones. At last, however, those feelings which
she had not power to define began to torment her; she wanted to
sleep, but being tortured by alarm she could not. Thinking that Lygia,
threatened by so many perils and uncertainties, was not sleeping either,
she turned to her to speak of her flight in the evening. But Lygia was
sleeping calmly. Into the dark cubiculum, past the curtain which was not
closely drawn, came a few bright rays, in which golden dust-motes were
playing. By the light of these rays Acte saw her delicate face, resting
on her bare arm, her closed eyes, and her mouth slightly open. She was
breathing regularly, but as people breathe while asleep.

"She sleeps,--she is able to sleep," thought Acte. "She is a child yet."
Still, after a while it came to her mind that that child chose to flee
rather than remain the beloved of Vinicius; she preferred want to shame,
wandering to a lordly house, to robes, jewels, and feasts, to the sound
of lutes and citharas.

"Why?"

And she gazed at Lygia, as if to find an answer in her sleeping face.
She looked at her clear forehead, at the calm arch of her brows, at
her dark tresses, at her parted lips, at her virgin bosom moved by calm
breathing; then she thought again,--"How different from me!"

Lygia seemed to her a miracle, a sort of divine vision, something
beloved of the gods, a hundred times more beautiful than all the flowers
in Caesar's garden, than all the statues in his palace. But in the Greek
woman's heart there was no envy. On the contrary,