“Believe me, my Clytie,” the mother added, not without a certain pride, though her eyes were full of tears, “you will be fortunate and happy. What husband can fail to love you—so good and so beautiful!”
Coronis now took her friend by the hand. As Clytie rose, the garments slipped lower and remained lying around her on the floor like a broad white linen garland. An instant, but only an instant, the young girl, faintly illumined by the lamp, stood in the white beauty of her snowy limbs in the dusky room; then, with a swift movement, she stepped out of the folds of her robes into the bath-tub.
Coronis, with a mischievous expression, raised the full hydria.
“Prepare to shiver, Clytie,” she said laughing. “I’m going to do what is written in Lamprus’ bath-song.” And holding it so that the water trickled down over the shining, supple body, she chanted in a low tone:
“Slowly pour the fountain’s water
O’er the white neck of the bride;
Brow and bosom let it moisten,
Hand, and foot, and back, and side!
Soon the fair one will perceive the
Cooling freshness of the bath,
As her fair limbs’ marble whiteness
The pink bloom of roses hath.”
While Doris was wiping her mistress’ back with a soft woollen cloth, the latter’s eyes followed the quivering drops of water that chased and mingled with each other on her white neck before trickling in waving streams over the smooth skin. Clytie was not vain of her beauty; but when, as now, she looked down over the soft slope of her shoulders and the chaste curves of her bosom she could not help receiving an impression of something uncommonly pretty. The water had not only strengthened her body, but given fresh vigor to her mind. A multitude of thoughts darted through her brain. Did not Homer himself tell the story of a bloody war waged for a fair woman’s sake? So woman’s beauty must be something precious. And for whom was she destined?
She saw in imagination her bridegroom Acestor—stately and boastful, but without a trace of Attic refinement, heavy and dull. She had only cast one hasty, timid glance at him, but a woman’s glance is like a flash of lightning, and she had caught him fixing his eyes on her with an expression she had never seen. She felt that it was monstrous, a desecration, to be given to this man, and secretly vowed to shun no means of escaping so bitter a fate.
This resolve was soon to be tested.
XVI.
Scarcely had Maira, accompanied by the nurse, left the room to go with Coronis to the door and make a final survey of the house, when a noise like a pebble flung against the wall was heard outside. Faint as the sound was, Doris started and Clytie, who was in the act of putting on her tunic, stopped, blushed crimson, and held her breath to listen.