Demetrios held out his head, supplicatingly.
She shot him a brilliant glance and gave him her sensual lips . . .
When he opened his eyes she was already afar off. A little pale shadow danced before her floating veil.
He returned vaguely towards the town, with his forehead bent under the weight of an inexpressible shame.
VI
THE VIRGINS
The dim dawn rose on the sea. All things were tinted with lilac. The furnace blazing on the summit of the tower of Pharos died down with the moon. Fugitive yellow gleams appeared in the violet waves like sirens’ faces under the hair of purple sea-weed. Daylight came all at once.
The quay was deserted. The town was dead. It was the grey light before the first day blush that illumines the world’s sleep and brings the feverish dreams of morning.
Nothing existed, except silence.
The long boats anchored in line near the quays, with their rows of parallel oars hanging in the water, looked like sleeping birds. The perspective of the architectural line of the streets was unbroken by vehicle, horse, or slave. Alexandria was but a solitude, the unreal phantom of some antique city abandoned for centuries.
But the sound of light footsteps fell tremulously upon the ground, and two young girls appeared, one dressed in yellow, the other in blue.