"Did you have pleasant dreams?" Marius asked, as he might have asked it of a child. She turned scornful eyes on him.
"I do not dream asleep!" she said. "Only when I wake. What are dreams but thoughts, and how can one think, asleep?"
He looked at her, surprised. She relapsed into silence, unwound the snake from her arm, at length, and took to turning it over and over in her fingers, letting the light play on its emerald eyes and the rich chasing of its scales. He continued to watch her, with greater freedom under her entire indifference. He felt that, if he should get up and leave her, she would take no notice, but lie there just the same, drowsy-eyed and indifferent, turning and turning the golden snake. This slipped from her fingers after a time and dropped to the floor at his feet. He picked it up, and as she held out her hand to receive it back, he clasped her wrist gently and began to coil the snake about her arm, above the elbow. She let him do it; emboldened, he kept her hand, when the jewel was in place, and pressed it gently. But she drew it away, not as though in rebuke, however, and examined the armlet to see that it was on properly.
"Is it not right?" Marius asked, amused. "Let me do it again; this time I will make sure."
She shook her head, with a slow smile at him. Greatly daring, he leaned nearer, and fastened the loosened pin on her shoulder. In the operation, his fingers touched her soft flesh. But she seemed not to notice him at all; so that quite suddenly he felt baffled and perplexed.
"You are a strange girl!" he said abruptly. Again she smiled.
"Why?" she asked. "Because you cannot understand me, you call me strange?"
He laughed.
"Perhaps that is it, O my Lady Wisdom. But truly I begin to think you a riddle worth the reading. It may be, that with somewhat of teaching, you might prove a pupil apt enough for any man."
She looked at him eagerly.