too?

It was possible, though she would not confess it even to herself, and
only yesterday had denied it, without the quiver of an eyelash.

Yet, if she did love a youth, and for his sake had climbed to the
spring, he must doubtless dwell in the reddish house, standing on a
beautiful level patch of ground on the right of the brook, between the
sea and the pool; for she glanced toward it again and again, and, except
the servants, no one lived under its roof save the aged steward Jason,
and Phaon, her uncle's son. Protarch himself had gone to Messina, with
his own and her father's oil.

To age is allotted the alms of reverence, to youth the gift of love,
and, of the three men who lived in the house on Xanthe's right-hand,
only one could lay claim to such a gift, and he had an unusually good
right to do so.

Xanthe was thinking of Phaon as she sat beside the spring, but her
brow wore such a defiant frown that she did not bear the most distant
resemblance to a maiden giving herself up to tender emotions.

Now the door of the reddish house opened, and, rising hastily, she
looked toward it. A slave came cautiously out, bearing a large jar with
handles, made of brown clay, adorned with black figures.

What had the high-shouldered graybeard done, that she stamped her foot
so angrily on the ground, and buried the upper row of her snow-white
teeth deep in her under-lip, as if stifling some pang?

No one is less welcome than the unbidden intruder, who meets us in the
place of some one for whom we ardently long, and Xanthe did not wish to
see the slave, but Phaon, his master's son.

She had nothing to say to the youth; she would have rushed away if
he had ventured to seek her by the spring, but she wanted to see him,
wanted to learn whether Semestre had told the truth, when she said Phaon
intended to marry a wealthy heiress, whose hand his father was seeking
in Messina. The house-keeper had declared the night before that he
only wooed the ugly creature for the sake of her money, and now took
advantage of his father's absence to steal out of the house evening
after evening, as soon as the fire was lighted on the hearth. And the
fine night-bird did not return till long past sunrise, no doubt from
mad revels with that crazy Hermias and other wild fellows from Syracuse.
They probably understood how to loosen his slow tongue.

Then the old woman described what occurred at such banquets, and when
she mentioned the painted flut