"That is not enough, Actæon. You would have to live like the other soldiers, spending your life in the Forum taverns, and sleeping on the steps of the Temple of Hercules. No! here is your home! Sónnica will protect you!"
In her sparkling eyes, enlarged by the dark circle traced about them, shone an almost maternal love and sympathy.
The Athenian gazed at her with admiration as she sat erect in her chair like a white cloud in the dimly illuminated library, which, like all Grecian rooms, received no other light than that entering through the doorway.
"Let us go into the garden, Actæon. The afternoon is delicious, and we can imagine ourselves for a moment in the groves of the Academy."
They went out of the house and strolled along a winding avenue bordered by tall laurels, above which peeped the tops of banana trees, irrigated with wine to accelerate their growth. On the terrace two peacocks hailed them with strident calls, strutting along the balustrade and spreading their majestic tails.
Actæon, on beholding his beautiful protectress in the light of the sun, felt a thrill of desire rush through his body. She wore as her only covering a Grecian chiton, an open tunic, fastened with metal clasps over the shoulders, and secured around the waist by a golden girdle. The arms emerged bare from the white wrapping, and the left side of the tunic, closed from the armpit to the knee by small brooches, half opened at each step, revealing her pearly nudity. The material was so delicate that its transparency displayed the outlines of her rosy body, which seemed to float in a veil of woven foam.
"Does my dress astonish you, Actæon?"
"No; I admire you. You seem to me Aphrodite surging from the waves. It is a long time since I have seen the women of Athens disclosing their divine beauty. I am corrupted by my travels, through the rude customs of the barbarians."
"It may happen so. As Herodotus says, nearly all who are not Greeks consider it opprobrious to appear nude.—If you only knew how scandalized the people of this city were in the beginning at my Athenian customs!—as if there existed anything more beautiful in the world than the human form!—as if the nude were not the supreme beauty! I adore Phryne, astonishing with her nude body the old men of the Areopagus; making the thousands of pilgrims gathered on the Eleusinian strand shout with enthusiasm when they saw her white form surge from among the veils, like the moon from behind the clouds. I believe in the promise of her bosom more than in the power of the gods."
"Do you doubt the gods?" asked Actæon, with his fine Athenian smile.