beside the sepulchre, she thought of the hour when she
had comforted him, of her care for him and how it had all been vain, for
he spent his nights in rioting with flute-playing women. Yes, Semestre
had said so. He seemed to Xanthe lost, utterly lost.

When she wept in the morning beside the spring, it was not, she now
thought, because of the heiress from Messina; no, the tears that had
sprung to her eyes were like those a mother sheds for her erring son.

She seemed to herself extremely venerable, and would have thought it
only natural if gray hair instead of golden had adorned the head over
which scarcely seventeen years had passed.

She even assumed the gait of a dignified matron, but it was hardly like
a mother, when, on her way to the rose-bushes by the sea, she studiously
strove to misunderstand and pervert everything good in Phaon, and call
his quiet nature indolence, his zeal to be useful to her weakness, his
taciturn manner mere narrow-mindedness, and even his beautiful, dreamy
eyes sleepy.

With all this, the young girl found little time to think of the new
suitor; she must first shatter the old divine image, but every blow of
the hammer hurt her as if it fell upon herself.

CHAPTER VI.

The rose-bush to which Xanthe went grew on the dike that belonged in
common to her father and uncle, beside a bench of beautifully-polished
white marble.

Many a winter had loosened the different blocks, and bordered them with
yellow edges.

Even at a distance the girl saw that the seat was not vacant. The
brook that flowed from the spring to the sea ran beneath it, and the
maid-servants were in the habit of washing the household linen in its
swift current.

Were they now using the bench to spread out the garments they had
rinsed?

No! A man lay on the hard marble, a man who had drawn his light cloak
over his face to protect himself from the rays of the sun, now rising
higher and higher.

His sandaled feet and ankles, bandaged as if for journeying, appeared
beneath the covering.

By these feet Xanthe quickly recognized the sleeping youth.

It was Phaon. She would have known him, even if she had seen only two of
his fingers.

The sun would soon reach its meridian height, and there he lay asleep.

At first it had startled her to find him here, but she soon felt nothing
but indignation, and again the image of the flute-playing women, with
whom he must have revelled until thus exhausted, rose before her