he conduct of the man who had gone on without heeding
the accident. He had cautioned his sister against the utterly unbridled
youth whose father he had himself brought to her house. With what good
reason he had raised his voice in warning was now evident. At sunset that
very day several guests had arrived as usual, followed by Antyllus, a
youth of nineteen. When the door-keeper refused to admit him, he had
rudely demanded to see Barine, thrust aside the prudent old porter, who
endeavoured to detain him, and, in spite of his protestations, forced his
way into his dead master's work-room, where the ladies usually received
their visitors. Not until he found it empty would he retire, and then he
first fastened a bouquet of flowers he had brought to a statue of Eros in
burnt clay, which stood there. Both the porter and Barine's waiting-maid
declared that he was drunk; they saw it when he staggered away with the
companions who had waited for him in the garden outside.

This unseemly and insulting conduct filled Berenike with the deepest
indignation. It must not remain unpunished, and, while waiting for her
daughter, she imagined what evil consequences might ensue if Antyllus
were forbidden the house and accused to his tutor, and how unbearable, on
the other hand, he might become if they omitted to do so.

She was full of sad presentiments, and as, with such good reason, she
feared the worst, she cherished a faint hope that her daughter might
perhaps bring home some pleasant tidings; for she had had the experience
that events which had filled her with the utmost anxiety sometimes
resulted in good fortune.

At last Barine appeared, and it was indeed long since she had clasped her
mother in her arms with such joyous cheerfulness.

The widow's troubled heart grew lighter. Her daughter must have met with
something unusually gratifying, she looked so happy, although she had
surely heard what had happened here; for her cloak was laid aside and her
hair newly arranged, so she must have been to her chamber, where she was
dressed by her loquacious Cyprian slave, who certainly could not keep to
herself anything that was worth mentioning. The nimble maid had shown her
skill that day.

"Any stranger would take her for nineteen," thought her mother. "How
becoming the white robe and blue-bordered peplum are to her; how softly
the azure bombyx ribbon is wound around the thick waves of her hair! Who
would believe that no curling-irons had