"I hardly know. Sometimes I think on certain conditions they might be; but those conditions, those conditions, O Lotis!"
"Are they so very hard?"
"They bid me renounce all! This life of excitement, this love of Magas, this applause of the multitude, this luxury of existence—to become again a slave. You know it well, Lotis, I am but a runaway slave."
"Your philosophy must be false, Chione, which implies such hard conditions. Slavery is a necessary evil, I grant; but still it is an evil to such as you, whose mind is exalted above the level of the herd. I cannot think that you are bound to slavery by any divine law; and as for human law, why, if you can keep clear of that, as you have done lately, who on earth will blame you?"
"You do not understand, you cannot understand how I am bound. Magas, you are aware, is not—can never be my husband."
"Well, I don't see why he might not be, if he paid the purchase-money for you, freed you, and then married you."
"He is too proud to marry a nameless slave!"
"But you are not nameless; you have made yourself a name in all the cities through which you have passed. We have heard of your fame at Smyrna, at Halicarnassus, at Ephesus, at—"
"Stop! Unconsciously you are paining me. It was at Ephesus I received the blow which is destroying me.'