The beautiful Greek threw to the floor the covers of white Sætabis linen, and her first glance swept her figure, taking in the outlines of her body with affectionate eyes, from her swelling bosom curving in harmonious lines, to the tips of her rosy feet.
Her heavy hair perfumed and falling in silky curls, hung down over her body, enveloping her as in a regal mantle, caressing her from throat to knees with a gentle kiss. The old-time courtesan, as she awoke, admired her body with the adoration inspired in her by the eulogies of the artists of Athens.
She was still young and beautiful; she could still thrill men with emotion when, at the end of a banquet, she displayed herself upon the table nude as Phryne. Her hands eager for the thrilling touch of her beauty, caressed her firm round throat, the pearly globes terminating in a soft rose petal, testing their firm elasticity, and the winding network of slender blue veins delicately outlined beneath the satiny skin, flowing down, down—in line with the strongly incurved waist; the rotund hips, the slightly rounded abdomen, like that of a crater, and the limbs the harmonious proportions of which had been compared in other times to the elephant's trunk by the Asiatic merchants who visited her in Athens.
Passion had swept its fiery tongue over her without consuming her; she had lived in the midst of its ardor, cold, emotionless, and white, like a marble statue in the warmth of the sun. Seeing herself young, still beautiful, and with a virginal freshness, she smiled, pleased with herself, content with life.
"Odacis! Odacis!"
At the echo of her voice there entered a Celtiberian slave, tall, spare, strong, whom the Greek valued highly for the gentleness with which she combed her hair.
Supporting herself on the shoulders of the slave, she raised up and sprang from the couch to enter the bath.
Her nude form was invested by her hair like a transparent, golden veil. As her bare feet pressed the mosaic, which depicted the Judgment of Paris, the chill of the tiles with its agreeable shock brought a smile to her lips; her laugh deepened the dimples in her cheeks, and the reaction caused the curves of her body to quiver with gentle undulations.
She descended three steps and threw herself into the jasper piscina swinging her arms and splashing the water into tiny pearls. In the green pool her body assumed an ideal transparency, the glow of a fantastic apparition, and she moved from one side of the tank to the other like a siren with pearly back and floating hair.
"Who has come, Odacis?" she asked, lying deep in the bath.