"Which costume, my mistress?" asked Odacis. "Do you wish the tunic with the golden flowers brought from Crete, or the _kalásiris_ veils, transparent as air, which you ordered bought in Alexandria?" Sónnica could not decide. She would choose in the vestiary; and in the majesty of her unveiled beauty, her papyrus sandals rustling, she walked from her dormitory followed by her slaves. Meanwhile Actæon was waiting in the library. He had visited great palaces in his travels about the world, he had seen--two years before the earthquake which ruined it--the celebrated Colossus of Rhodes; he was familiar with the Serapeum and the tomb of the great conqueror in Alexandria; he was accustomed to elegance and splendor; yet he could not conceal surprise at this Grecian house in a barbarian land, more luxurious and artistic than those of opulent citizens of Athens. Guided by a slave, and leaving the garden with its whispering foliage and its cries of exotic birds, he had passed along the colonnade which gave entrance to the villa. First the vestibule with its plinth of mosaic, on which were painted ferocious black dogs with fiery eyes, their fierce and foaming mouths agape, their fangs erect. Above the door, fastened to a lamp, hung a branch of laurel in honor of the tutelary gods of the house. Next to the somewhat gloomy vestibule, beneath the open sky, like a lung of the house, was the atrium with its four rows of columns supporting the roof and forming an equal number of cloisters, upon which opened the doors of the rooms, their three panels decorated with large-headed nails. In the centre of the atrium was the impluvium, a rectangular marble tank to catch and hold the waters from the roof. Great terra cotta urns covered with flowers stood upon pedestals between the columns; four marble tables sustained by winged lions surrounded the impluvium, and near it rose a statuette of Love which on festive days threw a spray of water. Actæon admired the graceful strength of the columns wrought in blue marble to match the socles of the galleries, which imparted to the light of the atrium a diffused radiance, as if the dwelling were submerged in the sea.