you, child? Irene went with you to the procession, that I know. Have
you had bad news of your parents? You shake your head. Come, child,
perhaps you are thinking of some one more than you ought; how the color
rises in your cheeks! Certainly handsome Publius, the Roman, must have
looked into your eyes--a splendid youth is he--a fine young man--
a capital good fellow--"

"Say no more on that subject," Klea exclaimed, interrupting her friend
and protector, and waving her hand in the air as if to cut off the other
half of Serapion's speech. "I can hear nothing more about him."

"Has he addressed you unbecomingly?" asked the recluse.

"Yes!" said Klea, turning crimson, and with a vehemence quite foreign
to her usual gentle demeanor, "yes, he persecutes me incessantly with
challenging looks."

"Only with looks?" said the anchorite. "But we may look even at the
glorious sun and at the lovely flowers as much as we please, and they are
not offended."

"The sun is too high and the soulless flowers too humble for a man to
hurt them," replied Klea. "But the Roman is neither higher nor lower
than I, the eye speaks as plain a language as the tongue, and what his
eyes demand of me brings the blood to my cheeks and stirs my indignation
even now when I only think of it."

"And that is why you avoid his gaze so carefully?"

"Who told you that?"