icus. They drank from the same cup, and he would take a grape from
between her lips with his mouth.

Moeroe came to Lollius, and cried and shrieked that Thais should be
restored to her.

"She is my daughter," she said, "my daughter, who has been torn from me.
My perfumed flower--my own bowels--!"

Lollius gave her a large sum of money, and sent her away. But, as she
came back to demand some more gold staters, the young man had her put
in prison, and the magistrates having discovered that she was guilty of
many crimes, she was condemned to death, and thrown to the wild beasts.

Thais loved Lollius with all the passion of her mind, and the
bewilderment of innocence. She told him, and told him truly from the
bottom of her heart--

"I have never loved any one but you."

Lollius replied--

"You are not like any other woman."

The spell lasted six months, but it broke at last. Thais suddenly felt
that her heart was empty and lonely. Lollius no longer seemed the same
to her. She thought--

"What can have thus changed me in an instant? How is it that he is now
like any other man, and no longer like himself?"

She left him, not without a secret desire to find Lollius again in
another, as she no longer found him in himself. She thought it would be
less dull to live with someone she had never loved, than with one she
had ceased to love. She appeared, in the company of rich debauchees, at
those sacred feasts at which naked virgins danced in the temples, and
troops of courtesans swam across the Orontes. She took part in all the
pleasures of the fashionable and depraved city; and she assiduously
frequented the theatres, at which clever mimes from all countries
performed amidst the applause of a crowd greedy for excitement.

She carefully observed the mimes, dancers, comedians, and especially the
women, who in tragedies represented goddesses in love with young men, or
mortals loved by the gods. Having discovered the secrets by which they
pleased the audience, she thought to herself that she was more beautiful
and could act better. She went to the manager, and asked to be admitted
into the troupe. Thanks to her beauty, and to the lessons she had
received from old Moeroe, she was received, and appeared on the stage in
the part of Dirce.

She met with but indifferent success, for she was inexperienced, and the
admiration of the spectators had not been aroused by hearing her praises
sung. But after she had played small part