"Have you heard the news, Hermogenes," said Lysis, "I have just been with Euripides. Protagoras is drowned. Within sight of Sicily a storm came up and drove the boat on the rocks. The sailors saved themselves by swimming; but Protagoras, who could not swim, sat on the prow of the boat. They saw him from the beach sitting calmly until the boat split in two. The waves reached out for him, and in a little time his bruised and battered body was cast up at their feet. As they reached for it it was snatched away by another wave. And so the sea played with him like a cat playing with a mouse. Then he was flung ashore. His face was bloody but smiling." "It was a judgment of the gods," said Hermogenes. "So everybody says." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _TO MRS ALFRED FOWLER_ III THE FRIEND OF PAUL ------------------------------------------------------------------------ III THE FRIEND OF PAUL The house of Serenus lay about four miles from Gades, in a country of vines and olives. It was built a little below the ridge of a hill, which sheltered it from the north-east winds, and fronted south-west, overlooking the Atlantic and a long stretch of the coast-line with its innumerable headlands and curving bays. From the windows in the upper storey Serenus could see this wide expanse of waters, never completely the same, but always restless and troubled, with caprice in sunlight, or anger in storms; or, turning to another aspect, the hills and valleys of his own estate; a land of cornfields, vineyards, and olive-yards, pleasantly diversified by slopes of green upland pasture, and beyond them the wild beauty of mountains with frosty summits and well-timbered flanks. The house was surrounded by a garden planted with myrtles and plane-trees, with alleys screened from the fierce heat of summer by dense boughs of ilex, curving tortuously in labyrinthine windings, or running perfectly straight until they ended in an arch, the frame, as it were, for some picture of land or sea. The grass by the paths was kept mown, but here and there, among thickets of myrtle, grew rank, harbouring the green lizards, who slipped out every now and then to bask in the sunlight on the marble steps, or on the pedestals of the statues of Priapus and the woodland gods.