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On the evening of the same day, Bartja and Sappho saw each other again.  In that first hour surprise and joy together made Sappho’s happiness too great for words.  When they were once more seated in the acanthus-grove whose blossoming branches had so often seen and sheltered their young love, she embraced him tenderly, but for a long time they did not speak one word.  They saw neither moon nor stars moving silently above them, in the warm summer night; they did not even hear the nightingales who were still repeating their favorite, flute-like, Itys-call to one another; nor did they feel the dew which fell as heavily on their fair heads as on the flowers in the grass around them.

At last Bartja, taking both Sappho’s hands in his own, looked long and silently into her face, as if to stamp her likeness for ever on his memory.  When he spoke at last, she cast down her eyes, for he said:  “In my dreams, Sappho, you have always been the most lovely creature that Auramazda ever created, but now I see you again, you are more lovely even than my dreams.”

And when a bright, happy glance from her had thanked him for these words, he drew her closer to him, asking:  “Did you often think of me?”

“I thought only of you.”

“And did you hope to see me soon?”

“Yes; hour after hour I thought, ‘now he must be coming.’  Sometimes I went into the garden in the morning and looked towards your home in the East, and a bird flew towards me from thence and I felt a twitching in my right eyelid; or when I was putting my box to rights and found the laurel crown which I put by as a remembrance, because you looked so well in it,—­Melitta says such wreaths are good for keeping true love—­then I used to clap my hands with joy and think, ‘to-day he must come;’ and I would run down to the Nile and wave my handkerchief to every passing boat, for every boat I thought must be bringing you to me.”

   [A bird flying from the right side, and a twitching of the right eye
   were considered fortunate omens.  Theokrirus, III. 37]

“But you did not come, and then I went sadly home, and would sit down by the fire on the hearth in the women’s room, and sing, and gaze into the fire till grandmother would wake me out of my dream by saying:  ’Listen to me, girl; whoever dreams by daylight is in danger of lying awake at night, and getting up in the morning with a sad heart, a tired brain and weary limbs.  The day was not given us for sleep, and we must live in it with open eyes, that not a single hour may be idly spent.  The past belongs to the dead; only fools count upon the future; but wise men hold fast by the ever young present; by work they foster all the various gifts which Zeus, Apollo, Pallas, Cypris lend; by work they raise, and perfect and ennoble them, until their feelings, actions, words and thoughts become harmonious like a well-tuned lute.  You cannot serve the man to