"Are your wits addled?" queried the woman contemptuously.
"Perhaps they have been, but I am in fair way to recover, as my scheme will prove. Should you marry this Glaucon, by Greek law it is true you would not inherit his estates; but no law prevents the fool from giving to you whatever you ask as the price of your favor; and you come high at times, as my thin belt can attest. But, my dear, you must appear to him as of princely rank, for the fellow has been flattered to believe himself courted by the very household of the King. I think I can make my letters sufficiently ennoble you, if your beauty does not evidence your divinity. Will not this sound well? Ahem! 'The Princess Helena, cousin to Apollonius!' Ah, you blush at the title. Glaucon will pay me well for persuading your Olympian wings to fold themselves on his dungheap. It is a scheme worthy the Jew himself, is it not? This little finger of yours will pick the lock of Glaucon's treasure-house."
The woman laughed outright as she cried:
"Shall I go to Jerusalem and act the prude? That is an art I have never practised. I surely had never won your love, my venerable Apollo, if I had posed as the chaste Artemis."
"Perhaps not," replied the General, with a shrug of his shoulders, "but you have acted the chaste goddess perfectly in the eyes of others. That I will say; for I have had less than a score of opportunities for jealousy during as many moons. And I will swear to this Glaucon that I caught you in my arms as you once escaped the Grotto of Pan at Ephesus."
"Grotto of Pan? Another remembrance of your nursery; and with a moral, I doubt not, as good as one of Æsop. Let me hear the story, but leave off the lesson," replied she, lolling languidly upon the couch.
"Why," said Apollonius, "at Ephesus, when a woman's virtue is not transparent, they bring her to Pan's Grotto for testing. If the god sees no offense in her, then the doors open to heavenly music, and she escapes. Looking one day for something in the shape of womanhood that was immaculate, I lingered by the entrance, and you came bouncing out. Glaucon is up in our Greek legends, and will understand me, even if you did not."
"But if the woman could not pass inspection?" his companion asked nonchalantly.
"Well, in such an unusual case for the town of Ephesus, where Artemis has her temple, the pipes in Pan's cave screech out a wail for the damned, and the tainted woman drops through the rock floor into the river Styx. I will swear that I did not fish you out of the river Styx."