“The Christian?” said the old woman, pushing aside a shade that screened her eyes.
“Yes, Constantine; I will not hear you abuse him.” Damia laughed sharply, and said in a tone of supreme scorn:
“You will not? Then you had better stop your ears, my dear, for as long as my tongue can wag....”
“Hush, grandmother, say no more,” said the girl resolutely. “Do not provoke me with more than I can bear. Eros has pierced me later than he does most girls and has done it but once, but how deeply you can never know. If you speak ill of him you only aggravate the wound and you would not be so cruel! Do not—I entreat you; drop the subject or else...”
“Or else?”
“Or else I must die, mother—and you know you love me.”
Her tone was soft but firm; her words referred to the future, but that future was as clear to Gorgo’s view as if it were past. Damia gave a hasty, sidelong glance at her grandchild, and a cold chill ran through her; the—girl stood and spoke with an air of inspiration—she was full of the divinity as Damia thought, and the old woman herself felt as though she were in a temple and in the immediate presence of the Immortals.
Gorgo waited for a reply, but in vain; and as her grandmother remained silent she went back to her place by the pedestal. At last Damia raised her wrinkled face, looked straight in the girl’s eyes and asked:
“And what is to be the end of it?”
“Aye—what?” said Gorgo gloomily and she shook her head. “I ask myself and can find no answer, for his image is ever present to me and yet walls and mountains stand between us. That face, that image—I might perhaps force myself to shatter it; but nothing shall ever induce me to let it be defiled or disgraced! Nothing!”