it to defend myself, to the death if need be! What you
call womanly honor I have been taught to hold as sacred as you yourself,
and I have kept it as untainted as any girl living. Not that I meant
to do anything grand, but you have no idea of what it is when every man
thinks he has a right to oppress and insult a girl and try to entrap
her. You, and others like you, know nothing of small things, for you are
sheltered by walls and privileges. We are every man's game, while they
approach you as humbly as if you were goddesses.--Besides! It is not
only what I have heard from Karnis, who knows the world and fine folks
like you; I have seen it for myself at Rome, in the senators' houses,
where there were plenty of young lords and great men's daughters--for
I have not gone through life with my eyes shut; with you love is like
lukewarm water in a bath, but it catches us like fire. Sappho of Lesbos
flung herself from the Leucadian rock because Phaon flouted her, and if
I could save Marcus from any calamity by doing the same, I would follow
her example.--You have a lover, too; but your feeling for him, with all
the 'intellect' and 'reflections,' and 'thought' of which you spoke,
cannot be the right one. There is no but or if in my love at any rate;
and yet, for all that, my heart aches so sorely and beats so wildly,
I will wait patiently with Eusebius and submit to whatever I am
bidden.--And in spite of it all you condemn me unheard, for you.... But
why do you stand and look like that? You look just like you did that
time when I heard you sing. By all the Muses! but you, too, like us,
have some fire in your veins, you are not one of the lukewarm sort; you
are an artist, and a better one than I; and if you ever should feel the
right love, then--then take care lest you break loose from propriety
and custom--or whatever name you give to the sacred powers that subdue
passion--even more wildly than I--who am an honest girl, and mean to
remain so, for all the fire and flame in my breast!"

Gorgo remembered the hour in which she had, in fact, proffered to the
man of her choice as a free gift, the love which, by every canon of
propriety, she ought only to have granted to his urgent wooing. She
blushed and her eyes fell before the humble little singer; but while
she was considering what answer she could make men's steps were heard
approaching, and presently Eusebius and Marcus entered the room,
followed by Gorgo's lover. Constantine was i