s utter the word "Arachne!"--and
his pride of education had suffered from the consciousness that he knew
nothing about her except the name, which in Greek meant "the spider."

Some special story must surely be associated with this Arachne, for which
his master desired to use his young countrywoman, Ledscha, as a model,
and whose statues Archias intended to place in his house in Alexandria
and in the great weaving establishment at Tennis beside the statue of
Demeter.

Stephanion, a Greek woman who grew up in a Macedonian household, must
know something about her.

So he cautiously turned the conversation to the spinner Arachne, and when
Stephanion entered into it, admitted that he, too, was curious to learn
in what way the sculptors would represent her.

"Yes," replied the maid, "my mistress has more than once racked her
brains over that, and Archias too. Perhaps they will carve her as a girl
at work in the house of her father Idmon, the purple dyer of Colophon."

"Never," replied Bias in a tone of dissent. "Just imagine how the loom
would look wrought in gold and ivory!"

"I thought so too," said Stephanion, in apology for the foolish idea."
Daphne thinks that the two will model her in different ways: Myrtilus, as
mistress in the weaving room, showing with proud delight a piece just
completed to the nymphs from the Pactolus and other rivers, who sought
her at Colophon to admire her work; but Hermon, after she aroused the
wrath of Athene because she dared to weave into the hangings the love
adventures of the gods with mortal women."

"Father Zeus as a swan toying with Leda," replied Bias as confidently as
if Arachne's works were before his eyes, "and in the form of a bull
bearing away Europa, the chaste Artemis bending over the sleeping
Endymion."

"How that pleases you men!" interrupted the maid, striking him lightly on
the arm with the duster which she had brought from the tent. "But ought
the virgin Athene to be blamed because she punished the weaver who, with
all her skill, was only a mortal woman, for thus exposing her divine
kindred?"

"Certainly not," replied Bias, and Stephanion went on eagerly: "And when
the great Athene, who invented weaving and protects weavers, condescended
to compete with Arachne, and was excelled by her, surely her gall must
have overflowed. Whoever is just will scarcely blame her for striking the
audacious conqueror on the brow with the weaver's shuttle."

"It is that very thing