“O Eros, give me patience!” thought Glaucon. He stood up. “Myrina—?”
“Myrina lives free. The hetæræ have joy and light.”
“I am speaking,” said Glaucon, “not of hetæræ, but of Athenian wives and mothers.” Cleita again sank her head. Glaucon, regarding her, strove at once to be master and wise. “You are a child, Cleita! If you smother there, you have yourself to thank!”
Nothing further coming from beneath the linen, he turned, after waiting until he was assured that it would come not, and left the gynecæum. Going, he said to himself, “She is a child! To-morrow I will buy her some basket or fan or piece of silk.”
Once more in the banquet-room he sat down and fingered the tablets covered with the accounting of Moschus the shipmaster. At last he pushed these aside, and with his elbows upon the table brought together his hands and rested his brow upon them. “Myrina—Myrina—Myrina! Deep and flowing and ever about me like River-Ocean—”
Myrina, from her own house, bought with earned gold, watched, too, that day, the light upon Mount Lycabettus. She saw it caress the temples upon the Acropolis, and of the great statue of Athena make a torch, a star, blazing gold. Myrina, walking in her garden, had driven a thorn into her unsandalled foot. After three days it yet troubled her, and this day she would go to the temple of Æsculapius. She went in an adorned litter, borne by slaves, her nurse beside her, behind her more slaves. The litter’s curtains were partly drawn aside. Athens might see a beautiful woman within, and, coming closer, demanding of those who knew, learn that it was Myrina.... Respect—they gave it in seeming abundance. Here was a learned and fair and rich woman, with great men for lovers! Gradually there grew about and behind the moving litter a crowd of the well-beseen. Dion walked upon one side, Simonides upon the other. Myrina spoke of the thorn in her foot, and the temple of Æsculapius, and then of a new poet and a new song and a new statue and a new comedy. She had rich laughter; she span a ball of warmth, and far and wide made it, rose-hued, enclose herself and all that approached. When they came to the temple of Dionysus, Daphnis and Menalcas and Strephon joined the procession of the litter. When they came to the plane trees and the colonnade and the court of the temple of Æsculapius the slaves brought the litter close to the ground. Forth stepped Myrina and halted upon one foot. Arms were outstretched, Strephon’s and Daphnis’s eyes brightened, they flushed rosy-red when she rested hand upon either, used them as staves for support. Priests of Æsculapius came to meet the rich train. Here was an inner court where a fountain bubbled clearly and flowers diffused their odours, and here were seats of marble for patients of high note. Myrina sat, and her nurse, kneeling, drew off the sandal. The light struck upon and made bright copper of Myrina’s red-brown head.
The physician came, examined the foot, at last drew out the troubling thorn. “By Pallas!” said Myrina, “that goes better!—I dreamed, last night, Hippias, an old dream of mine. I fought a beast with fire in a wood. What, servant of Æsculapius, do you think that that signifies?”
“I think that it signifies, Myrina, that you dreamed that you fought a beast with fire in a wood.”
“Not so! I took the dream to a soothsayer. He asked me where I would go this day, and when I told him, he said that the wood signified the new colonnade, the beast the thorn in my foot, and the fire the art of Æsculapius. O Proteus’s daughter, by name Interpretation! What marvels dost thou work!”
Myrina stood up. “Give me the pearl, Xanthus! Now will I go to the altar and make thank-offering.”