Lost in his thoughts, his steps took him unconsciously from the homeward road, from the main streets, along a way they knew well, and which still seemed as natural to him as that which led to the house of his forefathers.
Descending the hill of the nymphs, where Kleon’s house stood, he made towards the Agora. The moon was nearly at its full, the streets were silent. It is difficult for us to realize a wide-spread city, gardens, temples, porches, statues, lit at night only by the moon. The absence of public lights at night, the scarceness of light in private houses after sunset, accustomed the citizens, especially the poor, to rise at earliest dawn, so as to make as much as possible of the daytime, and to go to rest at an earlier hour than the inhabitants of our gas-illuminated cities care to do.
He had met few people, when he found himself already beyond the Stoa Poikile, where Mikôn’s paintings of Ajax and Kassandra showed plainly in the moonlight, and the new statue of Hermes just finished by Nikeratos, for which, as all men knew, that incomparable sculptor had taken the son of Kleinias as his model. Then he passed through the Agora, the great market-place of Athens, and by the Stoa Eleutheros, and on and on he scarce knew where, he scarce cared to know for certain.
Skirting the Mouseion hill, the road led to the Ilissos. A young girl, starting suddenly from behind the temple of Aphrodite, startled him; he wondered at his weakness. She was soon out of sight. He turned the corner by the Amazonian monument, and then, there by the river, there in its pleasant garden, there it was before him, but long unvisited, the pretty villa he had himself planned for Timandra.
The akanthos plants had grown since he saw them last; the jasmine, just bursting into blossom, half hid the well-known door. These small things stamped themselves upon his memory as he paused a moment and looked round him, he knew not why; then he knocked nervously. The old slave he had given her opened to him, and laid her finger on her lips. He crossed the tiny atrium, entered the chamber painted in deep-red colours. The lamp of curious workmanship, which he had brought from Lesbos, shed a soft light upon the walls. A draped Hebe, cup in hand, was painted on one wall, an undraped Ganymede upon the other, and leaning against the pedestal of a statue of Eros stood Timandra.
She was gazing through the small portico out upon the orange-trees and myrtles; across them shone the moon. Her golden hair was bound up in a knot behind; the flowing robe hung down in graceful folds, and only half concealed her figure. On the tripod table near her—the well-known tripod table, with the three satyrs for its legs—lay rolls of writing: the fifth book of the ‘Odyssey,’ and her favourite Anakreon in its purple case. He walked up silently and placed his hand upon her. Without a sign of wonder, she turned and looked full into his eyes. There was no reproach, no astonishment, as she leant her head upon him.
‘I was expecting you,’ she said; ‘something told me you would come.’
They sat down on the couch, and then, all gaiety, she said how she had often heard from Aspasia how busy he had been with his affairs. She had but seldom been of late, however, to see Aspasia. She could not understand how one who had been the friend of Perikles could take up with a man like Lysicles, so burly and so common, whose talk was of his oxen, and his thoughts no better than his talk.
And then she told how Sokrates had been to see her. ‘Extraordinary man!’ At first, she said, she wondered what he came for, he asked so many curious questions—how she had gained the love of such a one as Alkibiades, and many other things. And then she mimicked Sokrates, and tried to imitate his eyes and mouth, till her fond lover stopped her.
‘And yet there was much wisdom in it all,’ she said; ‘and when he talked of you and told me how you saved his life at Delion, he grew quite eloquent. I thought I could have listened to him all day long.’