y eight athletic
slaves with swelling muscles.

Sonnica ordered her women to enter this ambulatory dwelling; she pushed
in Lachares, whom she treated as an inferior, and whose familiarity was
tolerated as one of her caprices; and, turning toward the Greek, who
stood on an upper step of the temple, she smiled once more, bidding him
farewell with a wave of a hand covered to the fingernails with rings,
which at every movement traced streams of light through the air.

The litter swiftly disappeared along the city road, when suddenly Actaeon
became aware of hands caressing his neck.

It was Bacchis, looking still more wasted and ragged in the light of
day. She had one eye blackened, and bruised spots on her arms.

"I could not come before," said the slave humbly. "They only let me
loose a little while ago. What people! They barely gave me enough to
pay Lais. I have been thinking of you all night, god of mine, while they
were tormenting me, blowing in my face like tired satyrs."

Actaeon turned away, shrinking from her caresses. He perceived the odor
of wine on the wretched woman, drunk and exhausted after the adventures
of the night.

"You run away from me? Yes, I understand! I saw you talking with Sonnica
the rich, she whom her friends call the most beautiful woman in
Zacynthus. Are you going to be her lover? Oh, I know that she will adore
you. But she is only another like myself. Tell me, Actaeon, why do you
not take me with you? Why do you not make me your slave? My price will
be only one night with you."

The Greek pushed aside the thin arms which tried to embrace him, in
order to see the road where trumpets were blaring, and helmets and
lances were gleaming, in the midst of a great cloud of dust.

"Those are the legates from Rome who are leaving to-day," said the
woman.

Attracted by the charm which men of war exercised upon her childish
mind, she ran down the steps to obtain a closer view of the ambassadors
and their retinue.

In advance marched the trumpeters of the Roman ship, blowing their long
metal tubas, their cheeks bound by broad woolen bands. An escort of
citizens of Saguntum surrounded the ambassadors, making their shaggy
Celtiberian horses caracole, waving their lances, their heads covered
with triple-crested helmets which still bore the dents from blows
received in their latest skirmishes with the Turdetani. Some old men of
the Saguntine senate rode sedately on heavy horses, their long beards
c