s, showing the
pretty red leather sandals; leaving bare the neck and arms, which were
still childlike, but rather too long. The robe was fastened at the
waist with a wide bronze girdle.

Thus she moved silently down the steps, and approached her husband. The
long narrow face had that wonderful, almost bluish-white, complexion
only possessed by the daughters of Ionia, and which no noon-tide sun of
the south can embrown; the eye-brows, in a half-circle, regular as if
drawn with compasses, might have given to the countenance a lifeless,
statuesque appearance, but under the long, slightly curved, black
eye-lashes, the dark-brown gazelle-like eyes, now directed towards her
beloved, shone with a life full of feeling.

He flew towards her with an elastic step, lifted carefully, tenderly,
the sleeping child from her arm, and taking the flat straw lid from his
tool-basket, he placed the child on it, under the shade of a rose-bush.
The evening breeze threw the scented leaves of a full-blown rose on the
little one: he smiled in his sleep.

Then the master, winding his arm round the waist of his young wife, led
her to the just completed entrance-slab, and said:

"Now is the proverb ready, which I have kept hidden from thee till I
could finish it; now read, and know, and feel"--and he kissed her
tenderly on the mouth: "Thou--thou thyself art the happiness; _Thou_
dwellest here."

The young wife held her hand before her eyes to protect them from the
sun, which now shone in almost horizontal beams through the open
gateway; she read and blushed, the colour rose perceptibly in her
delicate white cheeks, her bosom heaved, her heart beat quickly: "O
Fulvius! thou art good. How thou dost love me! How happy we are!" And
she laid her two hands and arms on his right shoulder, on the other her
beautiful head.

He heartily pressed her to himself. "Yes, overflowing, without shadow
is our happiness--without measure or end."

Quickly, with a slight trembling, as if shivering, she raised herself,
and looked him anxiously in the face: "O, do not provoke the holy ones.
It is whispered," said she, herself whispering, "they are envious." And
she held her hand before his mouth.

But he pressed a loud kiss upon the small fingers, and cried: "I am not
jealous, I, a _man_--why should the holy ones be envious? I do not
believe that. I do not believe it of the holy ones--nor of the heathen
gods, if indeed they still have life and power."

"Speak