Now she even succeeded in moving her lips, and the man, who still held her little burning hand clasped in his first heard his own name very faintly uttered; then her parched lips almost inaudibly repeated the exclamation: "Too late!" and again, "Too late!" The next instant she pressed her left hand upon her panting breast. The rosy hue around her blended with the red tint of the pinks, and another haemorrhage bore the restless wanderer to that goal where every mortal journey ends. A QUESTION By Georg Ebers Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford PRELUDE. In the Art-Palace on green Isar's strand, Before one picture long I kept my seat, It held me spellbound by some magic band, Nor when my home I sought, could I forget. A year elapsed, came winter's frost and snow, 'Twas rarely now we saw the bright sun shine, I plucked up courage and cried: "Be it so!" Then southward wandered with those I call mine. Like birds of passage built we there a nest On a palm-shaded shore, all steeped in light, Life was a holiday, enjoyed with zest And grateful hearts, the while it winged its flight. Oft on the sea's wide purplish-blue expanse, With ever new delight I fixed my eyes, Alma Tadema's picture, at each glance Recalled to mind, a thousand times would rise. Once a day dawned, glad as a bride's fair face, Perfume, and light, and joy it did enfold, Then-without search, flitted from out of space Words for the tale that my friend's picture told. CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE-KEEPER AND THE STEWARD. "Salt sea-water or oil, it's all the same to you! Haven't I put my lamp out long ago? Doesn't the fire on the hearth give light enough? Are your eyes so drowsy that they don't see the dawn shining in upon us more and more brightly? The olives are not yet pressed, and the old oil is getting toward the dregs. Besides, you know how much fruit those abominable thieves have stolen. But sparrows will carry grain into the barn before you'll try to save your master's property!" So Semestre, the ancient house-keeper of Lysander of Syracuse, scolded the two maids, Chloris and Dorippe, who, unheeding the smoking wicks of their lamps, were wearily turning the hand-mills. Dorippe, the younger of the two, grasped her disordered black tresses, over which thousands of rebellious little hairs seemed to weave a veil of mist, drew from the mass of curls falling on her neck a bronze arrow, with which she extinguished the feeble light of both lamps, and, turning to the house-keeper, said: "There, then! We can't yet tell a black thread from a white one, and I must put out the lamps, as if this rich house were a beggar's hut. Two hundred jars of shining oil were standing in the storehouses a week ago. Why did the master let them be put on the ship and taken to Messina by his brother and Mopsus?"