"Thanks, thanks. We will return home now."
Chapter VI.
"Chione in grief, and a prey to despair!"
It was the Christian bishop who spoke, and his interlocutor was Lotis.
"Even so, my lord. During her illness the report was that she was beset by the furies. When I saw her, it seemed as though the hand of some avenging god lay heavy on her. If, my lord, you Christians are adepts in magic, as many people believe I would ask you to disenthrall her from the influence under which she suffers, whatever it may be."
"And it is Chione who is this famous Leontium, who has made so great a sensation in the eastern cities?" continued Dionysius, as if not hearing the last speech of Lotis.
"It is so."
"From what I have heard, her eloquence is something unusual."
"I too have heard so; but for myself, I was never present at one of her instructions. I saw her alone, bowed down as it were beneath the weight of the truth she was carrying; but unable to speak the last word, that word which promised to be the key to all the rest, the solution of mystery, the harmonizer of ideas. That last word was not spoken at Nauplia; her pupils awaited it, but her tongue was as it were paralyzed. Some powerful influence seemed ever to prevent her from speaking it."
"Poor Chione!"