I can not help it; but I must now know: Shall this
night belong to me, or to the daughter of Archias?"

"Is it impossible to talk with you, unlucky girl, as one would with other
sensible people?" Hermon burst forth wrathfully. "Everything is carried
to extremes; you condemn a brief necessary delay as breach of faith and
base treachery. This behaviour is unbearable."

"Then you will not come?" she asked apathetically, laying her hand upon
the door; but Hermon cried out in a tone half beseeching, half imperious:
"You must not go so! If you insist upon it, surely I will come. There is
no room in your obstinate soul for kind indulgence. No one, by the dog,
ever accused me of being specially skilled in this smooth art; yet there
may be duties and circumstances--"

Here Ledscha gently opened the door; but, seized with a fear of losing
this rare creature, whose singular beauty attracted him powerfully, even
now, this peerless model for a work on which he placed the highest hopes,
he strode swiftly to her side, and drawing her back from the threshold,
exclaimed: "Difficult as it is for me on this special day, I will come,
only you must not demand what is impossible. The right course often lies
midway. Half the night must belong to the banquet with my old friends and
Daphne; the second half--"

"To the barbarian, you think--the spider," she gasped hoarsely. "But my
welfare as well as yours depends on the decision. Stay here, or come to
the island--you have your choice."

Wrenching herself from his hold as she spoke, she slipped through the
doorway and left the room.

Hermon, with a muttered oath, stood still, shrugging his shoulders
angrily.

He could do nothing but yield to this obstinate creature's will.

In the atrium Ledscha met the slave Bias, and returned his greeting only
by a wave of the hand; but before opening the side door which was to lead
her into the open air, she paused, and asked bluntly in the language of
their people: "Was Arachne--I don't mean the spider, but the weaver whom
the Greeks call by that name--a woman like the rest of us? Yet it is said
that she remained victor in a contest with the goddess Athene."

"That is perfectly true," answered Bias, "but she had to atone cruelly
for this triumph; the goddess struck her on the forehead with the
weaver's shuttle, and when, in her shame and rage, she tried to hang
herself, she was transformed into the spider."

Ledscha stood still, and, while drawing