“Where are you going to in so leisurely a fashion?”

“I am going home.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

And she made a movement as if to resume her walk.

Then Demetrios thought that perhaps he had made a mistake in taking her for a courtesan. For some time past, the wives of the magistrates and functionaries had taken to dressing and painting themselves like the women of pleasure. She was probably a woman of honourable reputation, and it was not without irony that he finished his question thus:

“To your husband?”

She put her two hands to her sides and began to laugh.

“I haven’t one this evening.”

Demetrios bit his lip and suggested, almost timidly: