irst meeting.

The streets along which they passed in the pale morning light were now
deserted, and a film of mist, behind which glowed the golden light of
the newly risen sun, shrouded the horizon. The fresh air of morning was
delicious, and at this early hour there was no one to avoid--only the
peasants and their wives carrying the produce of their gardens and
fields to market on asses, or wagons drawn by oxen. The black slaves
of the town were sweeping the roadway. Here there were parties of men,
women, and children on their way to work in factories, which were at
rest but for a few hours in the bustling town. The bakers and
other provision-dealers were opening their shops; the cobblers and
metalworkers were already busy or lighting fires in their open stalls;
and Andreas nodded to a file of slave-girls who had come across from
the farm and gardens of Polybius, and who now walked up the street with
large milk-jars and baskets of vegetables poised on their heads and
supported with one gracefully raised arm.

They presently crossed the Aspendia Canal, where the fog hung over the
water like white smoke, hiding the figure of the tutelary goddess of the
town on the parapet of the bridge from those who crossed by the roadway.
The leaves of the mimosa-trees by the quay--nay, the very stones of the
houses and the statues, wet with the morning dew--looked revived and
newly washed; and a light breeze brought up from the Serapeum broken
tones of the chant, sung there every morning by a choir of priests, to
hail the triumph of light over darkness.

The crisp morning air was as invigorating to Melissa as her cold bath
had been, after a night which had brought her so little rest. She felt
as though she, and all Nature with her, had just crossed the threshold
of a new day, bidding her to fresh life and labor. Now and then a flame
from Lucifer's torch swallowed up a stretch of morning mist, while the
Hours escorted Phoebus Apollo, whose radiant diadem of beams was just
rising above the haze; Melissa could have declared she saw them dancing
forth before him and strewing the path of the sun with flowers. All
this was beautiful--as beautiful as the priest's chant, the aromatic
sweetness of the air, and the works of art in cast bronze or hewn marble
which were to be seen on the bridge, on the temple to Isis and Anubis to
the right of the street, under the colonnades of the handsomest houses,
on the public fountains--in short, wherever