“And you will not take for me a little ivory comb which pleases me, when you can have my two arms like two branches of ivory around your neck?” He tried to stroke them. She drew them behind her back and repeated: “To-morrow!” “I will bring it,” he said very low. “Ah! I knew it!” cried the courtesan; “and you will also give me the seven-stringed necklace of pearls on the neck of Aphrodite, and for that I will sell you all my body, which is like a half-opened shell of mother-of-pearl, and more kisses in your mouth than there are pearls in the sea!” ill-016 Demetrios held out his head, supplicatingly. She shot him a brilliant glance and gave him her sensual lips . . . When he opened his eyes she was already afar off. A little pale shadow danced before her floating veil. He returned vaguely towards the town, with his forehead bent under the weight of an inexpressible shame. VI THE VIRGINS The dim dawn rose on the sea. All things were tinted with lilac. The furnace blazing on the summit of the tower of Pharos died down with the moon. Fugitive yellow gleams appeared in the violet waves like sirens’ faces under the hair of purple sea-weed. Daylight came all at once. The quay was deserted. The town was dead. It was the grey light before the first day blush that illumines the world’s sleep and brings the feverish dreams of morning. Nothing existed, except silence. The long boats anchored in line near the quays, with their rows of parallel oars hanging in the water, looked like sleeping birds. The perspective of the architectural line of the streets was unbroken by vehicle, horse, or slave. Alexandria was but a solitude, the unreal phantom of some antique city abandoned for centuries. But the sound of light footsteps fell tremulously upon the ground, and two young girls appeared, one dressed in yellow, the other in blue. They both wore maidens’ girdles, which circled round the hips and buckled low down upon the body below the navel. They were the musicians of the night, the singing-girl and one of the flute-girls. The flute-girl was younger and prettier than her friend. Her eyes smiled faintly, pale as the blue of her robe, half hidden under her eyelids. Her two slender flutes hung dangling from her flowered shoulder-knot along her back. A double iris-garland, fastened to the ankles by two silver anklets, undulated beneath the gauzy robe and encircled the rounded legs. She said: