With his chisel in his left hand and his mallet in his right, he resumed, but without ardour, an interrupted rough study. It was the breast and shoulders of a gigantic horse intended for the temple of Poseidon. Under the close-cropped mane, the skin of the neck, puckered by a movement of the head, curved in geometrically like an undulating marine basin. Three days before, the details of this regular muscular arrangement had entirely absorbed all Demetrios’s interest; but on the morning of the death of Chrysis, the aspect of things seemed changed. Less calm than he could have wished, Demetrios could not succeed in fixing his preoccupied thoughts. A sort of veil which he could not lift interposed itself between him and the marble. He throw down his mallet and began to pace about amongst the dusty pedestals. Suddenly he crossed the court, called a slave, and said to her: “Prepare the piscina and the aromatics. Bathe me and perfume me, give me my white garments, and light the round perfume-pans.” When he had finished his toilette, he summoned two other slaves. “Go,” said he, “to the Queen’s prison; hand the gaoler this lump of potter’s earth, and tell him to place it in the death-chamber of Chrysis the courtesan. If the body has not already been thrown into the dungeon, charge him to take no action until he receives my orders. Go quickly.” He put a roughing-chisel into the fold of his girdle and opened the principal door which gave upon the deserted avenue of the Dromos. Suddenly he halted on the threshold, stupefied by the immense midday light of Africa. ill-083 The street was certainly white and the houses white too, but the flame of the perpendicular sunbeams bathed the gleaming surfaces with such a fury of reflections that the limestone walls and the pavements danced with prodigious incandescence in dark blue, red, green, raw ochre, and hyacinth. Great palpitating pillars of colour seemed to hang in the air and to be superimposed in transparent masses over the shimmering, flaming facades. The very lines of the houses lost their shape behind this dazzling magnificence; the right wall of the street rounded off dimly into space, floated like a piece of drapery, and in certain places became invisible. A dog lying near a street-post was literally bathed in crimson. Lost in admiration, Demetrios saw a symbol of his new existence in this spectacle. He had lived long enough in solitary night, in silence, and in peace. Long enough had he taken moon-beams for light, and, for his ideal, the languid line of a too delicate pose, His work was not virile. There was an icy shiver on the skin of his statues.