"That child, who, I think, has grown into a very charming girl--and,
before her, pretty Gula, the wife of Paseth, who, like your father, is
away on his ship."

Here, in a tone of triumphant confidence, the answer rang from the
Biamite's lips: "There the slanderer stands revealed! Now you are
detected, now I perceive the meaning of your threat. Because, miserable
slave, you cherish the mad hope of beguiling me yourself, you do your
utmost to estrange me from your master. Gula, you say, visited Hermon
in his studio, and it may be true. But though I have been at home only
a short time, Tennis is too full of the praises of the heroic Greek
who, at the risk of his own life, rescued a child from Paseth's burning
house, for the tale not to reach my ears from ten or a dozen different
quarters. Gula is the mother of the little girl whose life was saved
by Hermon's bold deed, and perhaps the young mother only knocked at her
benefactor's door to thank him; but you, base defamer--"

"I," Bias continued, maintaining his composure with difficulty, "I saw
Gula secretly glide into our rooms again and again to permit her child's
preserver to imitate in clay what he considered beautiful. To seek your
love, as you know, the slave forbade himself, although a man no more
loses tender desires with his freedom than the tree which is encircled
by a fence ceases to put forth buds and blossoms. Eros chooses the
slave's heart also as the target for his arrows; but his aim at yours
was better than at mine. Now I know how deeply he wounds, and so, as
soon as yonder ship in the harbour bears our visitor away again, I shall
see you, Schalit's daughter, Ledscha, standing before Hermon's modelling
table and behold him scan your beauty to determine what seems worth
copying."

The Biamite, panting for breath, had listened to the end. Then, raising
her little clinched hand menacingly, she muttered through her set teeth:
"Let him try even to touch my veil with his fingers! If I had not been
obliged to go away, this would not have happened to my Taus and luckless
Gula."

"Scarcely," replied Bias calmly. "If the chicken runs into the water,
the hen can not save it. For the rest--I grew up as a boy in freedom
with the husband of your sister, who summoned you to her aid. His
father's brick-kiln was next to our papyrus plantation. Then we fared
like so many others--the great devour the small, the just cause is
the lost one, and the gods are like men. My fa