Doris felt with her hand over the wall near the head of the bed and found the nail with the three-toothed key, which she took quietly without any extreme haste.
“I dare not let the water stand,” she said, “my mistress ordered me to pour it out.”
Without waiting for a reply, she left the room as lightly as a feather, and breathless with joy and excitement ran back to Clytie, before whom she triumphantly held aloft the key.
Clytie clasped her in her arms and kissed her tenderly, then, without losing a moment, she gave her the bundle of clothes, threw a blue-striped kerchief over her head, and holding her faithful maid-servant’s hand, glided out of the room.
XVIII.
Clytie’s heart was throbbing with excitement. In passing on she raised the curtain hanging at the door of the apartment in which stood the images of the household gods, and bowing towards the little statues, wholly invisible in the gloom, murmured in a low tone:
“Do not be wrathful, protectors of my race! Do not desert me because I forsake you.”
Then, accompanied by Doris, she walked through the open hall into a large work-room set apart for women. The darkness here was so great that nothing was visible save two narrow grey streaks; these were the loop-holes in the wall, through which the room received its light by day. A warm atmosphere, the heat emanating from human bodies, greeted the fugitives, and they heard the heavy breathing of numerous sleepers. Most of the female slaves of the household spent the night here on couches made of piles of cushions or felt rugs ranged along the wall. As Doris moved towards the garden door she ran against something, probably a tall tripod. She hastily caught at it, but in the darkness missed her aim and it fell with a heavy crash, while a copper lamp which had stood upon it rattled on the stone floor. The slave women started from their sleep; the shrieks of one terrified the others till all vied in screaming. Hasty footsteps crossed the peristyle, and a man’s voice cried angrily:
“What an ado! Why are you yelling so? What is it?”
“Hush, you simpletons!” said Doris’ well-known tones, “do you take me for a thief who has lifted the door off its hinges or dug his way through under the wall?”