CHAPTER VII.

While Marcus was restlessly wandering on the shore of Mareotis, dreaming of Dada’s image and arranging speeches of persuasive eloquence by which to touch her heart and appeal to her soul, silence had fallen on the floating home of the singers.  A light white mist, like a filmy veil—­a tissue of clouds and moonbeams—­hung over the lake.  Work was long since over in the ship-yard, and the huge skeletons of the unfinished ships threw weird and ghostly shadows on the silvered strand-forms like black visions of crayfish, centipedes, or enormous spiders.

From the town there came not a sound; it lay in the silence of intoxicated sleep.  The Roman troops had cleared the streets, the lights were dead in every house, and in all the alleys and squares; only the moon shone over the roofs of Alexandria, while the blazing beacon of the light-house on the north-eastern point of the island of Pharos shone like a sun through the darkness.

In a large cabin in the stern of the vessel lay the two girls, on soft woollen couches and covered with rugs.  Agne was gazing wide-eyed into the darkness; Dada had long been asleep, but she breathed painfully and her rosy lips were puckered now and then as if she were in some distress.  She was dreaming of the infuriated mob who had snatched the garland from her hair—­she saw Marcus suddenly interfere to protect her and rescue her from her persecutors—­then she thought she had fallen off the gangway that led from the land to the barge, and was in the water while old Damia stood on the shore and laughed at her without trying to help her.  Night generally brought the child sound sleep or pleasant dreams, but now one hideous face after another haunted her.

And yet the evening had brought her a great pleasure.  Not long after their return from their walk the steward had come down to the boat and brought her a very beautiful dress, with greetings from his old mistress; he had at the same time brought an Egyptian slave-woman, well skilled in all the arts of the toilet, who was to wait upon her so long as she remained in Alexandria.  Dada had never owned such a lovely dress!  The under-robe was of soft sea-green bombyx silk, with a broad border, delicately embroidered, of a garland of roses and buds.  The peplos was of the same color and decorated to match; costly clasps of mosaic, representing full-blown roses and set in oval gold settings, fastened it on the shoulders.  In a separate case were a gold girdle, a bracelet, also of gold, in the shape of a snake, a gold crescent with a rose, like those on the shoulder-clasps, in its centre, and a metal mirror of spotless lustre.

The slave, a middle-aged woman with a dark cunning face, had helped her to put on this new garment; she had also insisted on dressing her hair, and all the time had never ceased praising the charms that nature had bestowed on her young mistress, with the zeal of a lover.