“I will not ask you to give me three presents, were they as simple as the first three were rare. It would be contrary to the usages. But I can ask you to accept some, can I not?” “Assuredly,” said Chrysis joyously. “This mirror, this necklace, this comb, which you made me steal for you, you did not expect to use them, I suppose? A stolen mirror, the comb of a victim, and the goddess’s necklace are not jewels one can make a display of.” “What an idea!” “No, I thought so. It is therefore out of pure cruelty that you incited me to ravish them at the price of the three crimes with which the whole town resounds to-day. Well, you are going to wear them.” “What?” “You must go into the little enclosed garden where the statue of the Stygian Hermes is. This place is always deserted, and you will run no risk of being disturbed. You will take off the god’s left heel. The stone is broken, you will see. Then, in the interior of the pedestal, you will find Bacchis’s mirror, and you will place it in your hand; you will find the great comb of Nitaoucrit, and will place it in your hair; you will find the seven pearl necklaces of the goddess Aphrodite, and you will put them on your neck. Thus adorned, beautiful Chrysis, you will go about the town. The crowd will deliver you to the Queen’s soldiers, but you will have what you desired, and I will go and see you in your prison before sunrise.” V THE GARDEN OF HERMANUBIS Chrysis’s first impulse was to shrug her shoulders. She would not be so ingenuous as to keep her word. The second was to go and see. A rising curiosity impelled her toward the mysterious place where Demetrios had hidden the three criminal trophies. She wanted to take them, to touch them with her hands, to make them gleam in the sunlight, to possess them for an instant. It seemed to her that her victory would not be quite complete so long as she should not have seized the booty of her ambitions. ill-076 As for Demetrios: she would find the means of recapturing him ultimately. How was it possible to believe that he had emancipated himself from her for ever? The passion she attributed to him was not one of those that die out in a man’s heart irrevocably. The women one has once greatly loved form a family of election in a man’s heart and the meeting with a former mistress, even though hated or forgotten, excites an unexpected disorder of the soul whence the new love may burst forth. Chrysis was not ignorant of this. However ardent she might be herself, however anxious to conquer the first man she had ever loved, she was not mad enough to buy him at the cost of her life when she saw so many other methods of seducing him more simply. And yet . . . what a blessed end he had proposed to her!