She drank half the contents of the cup, then, whether it was that she had seen this gesture at the Theatre, in the _Thyestes_ of Agathon, or whether it was really the outcome of a spontaneous sentiment, she handed the poison to Demetrios. But the young man waved away this indiscreet suggestion. Then the Galilæan drank the rest of the beverage even to the green slime at the bottom. An agonising smile overspread her cheeks, a smile in which there was certainly a little contempt. ill-081 “What must I do?” she said to the gaoler. “Walk about the room, my girl, until you feel a heaviness in the legs. Then lie down on your back, and the poison will do the rest.” Chrysis walked to the window, leaned her head against the wall, with her temples in her hand, and cast a last look of vanished youth upon the violet dawn. The orient was bathed in a sea of colour. A long band, livid as a water leaf, enveloped the horizon with an olive-coloured girdle. Higher up, several tints sprang out of one another, liquid sheets of blue-green sky, irisated, or lilac-coloured, melting insensibly into the leaden azure of the upper heavens. Then, these tiers of colour rose slowly, a line of gold appeared, mounted, expanded: a thin thread of purple illumined this melancholic dawn, and, in a flood of blood, the sun was born. It is written: "The light is sweet . . .” She remained thus, standing, so long as her legs could sustain her. When she showed signs of reeling, the hoplites carried her to the bed. There, the old man disposed the white folds of the robe along the rigid limbs. Then he touched her feet and asked her: “Do you feel anything?” ill-082 _The hoplites carried her to the bed._ She answered: “No.” He touched her knees and asked her: “Do you feel anything?” She made a sign to him that she felt nothing, and suddenly, with a movement of her mouth and shoulders (for her very hands were dead), seized with a supreme frenzy of passion, and perhaps with regret, at this sterile hour, she raised herself towards Demetrios, but before he could answer she fell back lifeless, with the light for ever gone from out of her eyes. Then the executioner covered her face with the upper folds of her garment: and one of the assistant soldiers, supposing that a more tender past had once united this young man and woman, severed with his sword the uttermost lock of her hair, and it fell down upon the paving-stones. Demetrios took it in his hand, and in truth it was Chrysis in her entirety, the gold that survived her beauty, the very pretext of her name . . . He took the warm lock between his thumb and his fingers, severed the strands slowly, dropped them to the earth, and ground them into the dust under the sole of his shoe. III CHRYSIS IMMORTAL When Demetrios found himself alone in his red studio, littered with marble statuary, rough models, trestles, and scaffoldings, he endeavoured to apply himself once more to his work.