CHAPTER III.

Irene's foot was not more susceptible to the chafing of a strap than her
spirit to a rough or an unkind word; the Roman's words and manner had
hurt her feelings.

She went towards home with a drooping head and almost crying, but before
she had reached it her eyes fell on the peaches and the roast bird she
was carrying. Her thoughts flew to her sister and how much the famishing
girl would relish so savory a meal; she smiled again, her eyes shone with
pleasure, and she went on her way with a quickened step. It never once
occurred to her that Klea would ask for the violets, or that the young
Roman could be anything more to her sister than any other stranger.

She had never had any other companion than Klea, and after work, when
other girls commonly discussed their longings and their agitations and
the pleasures and the torments of love, these two used to get home so
utterly wearied that they wanted nothing but peace and sleep. If they
had sometimes an hour for idle chat Klea ever and again would tell some
story of their old home, and Irene, who even within the solemn walls of
the temple of Serapis sought and found many innocent pleasures, would
listen to her willingly, and interrupt her with questions and with
anecdotes of small events or details which she fancied she remembered of
her early childhood, but which in fact she had first learnt from her
sister, though the force of a lively imagination had made them seem a
part and parcel of her own experience.

Klea had not observed Irene's long absence since, as we know, shortly
after her sister had set out, overpowered by hunger and fatigue she had