She gave them each a quick embrace, bent before her mother, and followed her father toward a little doorway beyond the tier of seats. Before entering this, she turned and waved to the girls, who were still standing watching her. “Isn’t she simply a Jim-Dandy?” the irrepressible Rose wanted to know. “Sit down now,” said the gentle voice of Sappho’s mother, as she settled herself on her own broad bench, over which a scarlet cloth was laid. “In a moment you will see all the girls who are to run come out through that little door almost opposite—see, there they come.” And as she spoke a bevy of young things, all of them in a short white one-piece slip that left the arms and legs bare, came pouring out into the arena. Each of them carried a torch in her hand, whose flame bent and fluttered in the breeze. Straining their eyes to look, the girls distinguished Sappho among the others. She had bound her hair with a broad scarlet ribbon and stood very light and proud, looking fit and ready even at this distance. Men in brilliant cloaks were moving among the girls, assigning them their places. Presently they drew back, leaving a line of eager young figures, tense and tremulous with excitement. Suddenly, at a signal the girls did not see, they were off. What a race it was, under that blue and throbbing sky, with the vari-coloured throng waving streamers of blue and gold and crimson, and shouting encouragements. Slender and vivid as the blown-back flames of their torches, the white young runners, dashing this way and that to save their torches from attack, or to attack in their turn. The fire fluttered at the ends of the sticks with a life of its own. Now one girl and then another would forge ahead for a yard or two, but some other racer would reach her, and beat at the flame, lowered by the speed of her movement. Before long, several torches were extinguished. The shout of the populace was one long roar by this time, and Rose and Ruth did their share in making a noise. Ruth, not given to demonstrations, was hopping up and down like a mechanical toy, waving both arms over her head, and calling out, “Oh, Sappho, Sappho, Sappho, HURRY!” While Rose stood hugging herself, yelling madly, “Go it, go it, you’ve GOT to win!” A half dozen of the twenty or more runners were left by this time. The others, dropping their dead torches, walked slowly back to the starting point. A tall dark girl and Sappho ran together near the middle of the bunch, three girls leading them by a few paces. Very soon, however, Sappho, with a sudden burst of speed, passed these three and ran freely out into the lead. Rose and Ruth gave one cry of frantic joy. But at the instant the dark girl, springing forward, reached Sappho’s side, and made a vicious strike at her torch. She missed it, but with a quick movement swung the flame of her own torch under Sappho’s upraised arm, so that the red fire licked upward toward the wrist.