The more he thought of her the more her strange commands seemed to please him. How many women were her equal! how many had presented themselves to him in an unfavourable manner! What did she demand? Neither love, gold, nor jewels, but three impossible crimes! She interested him keenly. He had offered her all the treasures of Egypt: he realized now that if she had accepted them she would not have received two obols, and he would have wearied of her even before he had known her. Three crimes, assuredly, were an uncommon salary; but she was worthy to receive it since she was the woman to demand it, and he promised himself to go on with the adventure. To give himself no time to repent of his resolutions that very day he went to the house of Bacchis, found it empty, took the silver mirror and fled into the gardens. Must he at once go to the second victim of Chrysis? Demetrios did not think so. The wife of the High Priest Touni, who possessed the famous ivory comb, was so charming and so weak that he feared to approach her without preliminary precautions. So he turned back and walked along the great Terrace. The courtesans were outside their dwellings like a display of flowers. There was no less diversity in their attitudes and costumes than in their ages, types and nationalities. The most beautiful, according to the tradition of Phryne, only leaving the oval of their faces uncovered, were clad from their hair to their heels in great robes of fine wool. Others had adopted the fashion of transparent robes, through which their beauty could be distinguished in a mysterious way, as through limpid water one can see the patches of green weeds at the bottom of the river. Those whose only charm was their youth remained naked to the waist, and displayed the firmness of their breasts. But the older women, knowing how much more quickly a woman’s face grows old than does the skin of the body, sat quite naked, holding their breasts. Demetrios passed very slowly in front of them without allowing himself to admire them. He could never view a woman’s nakedness without intense emotion. He could not realize any feeling of disgust in the presence of the dead, or of insensibility with very young girls. That evening every woman could have charmed him. Provided she kept silence and did not display any more ardour than the minimum demanded by politeness her beauty did not matter. He preferred, also, that she should have a “coarse” body, for the more his thoughts were fixed upon perfect shapes the further away from them did his desire depart. The trouble, which the impression of living beauty gave to him, was of an exclusively cerebral sensuality which reduced to naught other excitation. He recollected with agony that he had remained for an hour like an old man by the side of the most admirable woman he had ever held in his arms. Since that night he had learned to select less pure mistresses. “Friend,” a voice said, “do you not know me?”