"Come down to our house; I will show you something pretty: four young doves have come out of the shell; they have big, wide bills, and are very ugly."
Her playmate removed his hands from his eyes and answered kindly:
"No, let me alone, please."
Xanthe now took his hand and drew him away, saying:
"Yes, you must come; the pole of my cart is broken."
Phaon had been so accustomed to be always called upon whenever there were any of the little girl's playthings to mend that he obeyed, and the next day allowed her to persuade him to do many things for which he felt no inclination.
He yielded in order not to grieve her, and, as he became more cheerful and even joined in her merry laugh, Xanthe rejoiced as if she had released him from his sorrow. From that time she claimed his services as eagerly as before, but in her own heart felt as if she were his little mother, and watched all his actions as though specially commissioned to do so.
When she had grown up she did not hesitate to encourage or blame him, nay, was often vexed or grieved about him, especially if in the games or dances he paid more attention than she deemed reasonable to other girls, against whom there was much or little objection, nay, often none at all.
Not on her own account, she said to herself, it could make no difference to her, but she knew these girls, and it was her duty to warn him.
She willingly forgave many things, but on this point was extremely rigid, and even allowed anger to carry her to the verge of rudeness.
Now, as she stood beside the sepulchre, she thought of the hour when she had comforted him, of her care for him and how it had all been vain, for he spent his nights in rioting with flute-playing women. Yes, Semestre had said so. He seemed to Xanthe lost, utterly lost.
When she wept in the morning beside the spring, it was not, she now thought, because of the heiress from Messina; no, the tears that had sprung to her eyes were like those a mother sheds for her erring son.
She seemed to herself extremely venerable, and would have thought it only natural if gray hair instead of golden had adorned the head over which scarcely seventeen years had passed.
She even assumed the gait of a dignified matron, but it was hardly like a mother, when, on her way to the rose-bushes by the sea, she studiously strove to misunderstand and pervert everything good in Phaon, and call his quiet nature indolence, his zeal to be useful to her weakness, his taciturn manner mere narrow-mindedness, and even his beautiful, dreamy eyes sleepy.
With all this, the young girl found little time to think of the new suitor; she must first shatter the old divine image, but every blow of the hammer hurt her as if it fell upon herself.
CHAPTER VI.
The rose-bush to which Xanthe went grew on the dike that belonged in common to her father and uncle, beside a bench of beautifully-polished white marble.
Many a winter had loosened the different blocks, and bordered them with yellow edges.
Even at a distance the girl saw that the seat was not vacant. The brook that flowed from the spring to the sea ran beneath it, and the maid- servants were in the habit of washing the household linen in its swift current.
Were they now using the bench to spread out the garments they had rinsed?
No! A man lay on the hard marble, a man who had drawn his light cloak over his face to protect himself from the rays of the sun, now rising higher and higher.
His sandaled feet and ankles, bandaged as if for journeying, appeared beneath the covering.
By these feet Xanthe quickly recognized the sleeping youth.
It was Phaon. She would have known him, even if she had seen only two of his fingers.
The sun would soon reach its meridian height, and there he lay asleep.
At first it had startled her to find him here, but she soon felt nothing but indignation, and again the image of the flute-playing women, with whom he must have revelled until thus exhausted, rose before her mind.
"Let him sleep," she murmured proudly and contemptuously; she passed him, cut a handful of roses from the bushes covered with crimson and yellow blossoms, sat down on the vacant space beside his head, watched for the ship from Messina, and, as it did not come, began to weave the garland.
She could do the work here as well as anywhere else, and told herself that it was all the same to her whether Phaon or her father's linen lay there. But her heart belied these reflections, for it throbbed so violently that it ached.
And why would not her fingers move; why could her eyes scarcely distinguish the red roses from the yellow ones?
The garden was perfectly still, the sea seemed to slumber, and, if a wave lapped the shore, it was with a low, almost inaudible murmur.
A butterfly hovered like a dream over her roses, and a lizard glided noiselessly, like a sudden thought, into a chink between the stones at her feet. Not a breath of air stirred, not a leaf or a twig fell from the trees.
Yonder, as if slumbering under a blue veil, lay the Calabrian coast, while nearer and more distant, but always noiselessly, ships and boats, with gently swelling sails, glided over the water. Even the cicadas seemed to sleep, and everything around was as still, as horribly still, as if the breath of the world, blooming and sparkling about her, was ready to fail.
Xanthe sat spellbound beside the sleeper, while her heart beat so rapidly and strongly that she fancied it was the only sound audible in this terrible silence.
The sunbeams poured fiercely on her head, her cheeks glowed, a painful anxiety overpowered her, and certainly not to rouse Phaon, but merely to hear some noise, she coughed twice, not without effort. When she did so the third time, the sleeper stirred, removed from his face the end of the cloak that had covered his head, slowly raised himself a little, and, without changing his recumbent posture, said simply and quietly, in an extremely musical voice:
"Is that you; Xanthe?"
The words were low, but sounded very joyous.
The girl merely cast a swift glance at the speaker, and then seemed as busily occupied with her roses as if she were sitting entirely alone.
"Well?" he asked again, fixing his large dark eyes upon her with an expression of surprise, and waiting for some greeting.
As she remained persistently silent, he exclaimed, still in the same attitude:
"I wish you a joyful morning, Xanthe." The young girl, without answering this greeting, gazed upward to the sky and sun as long as she could endure the light, but her lips quivered, and she flung the rose she held in her hand among its fellows in her lap.
Phaon had followed the direction of her look, and again broke the silence, saying with a smile, no less quietly than before:
"Yes, indeed, the sun tells me I've been sleeping here a long time; it is almost noon."
The youth's composure aroused a storm of indignation in Xanthe's breast.
Her excitable blood fairly seethed, and she was obliged to put the utmost constraint upon herself not to throw her roses in his face.
But she succeeded in curbing her wrath, and displaying intense eagerness, as she shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed toward some ships that appeared in view.
"I don't know what is the matter with you," said Phaon, smoothing with his right hand the black hair that covered half his forehead. "Do you expect the ship from Messina and my father already?"
"And my cousin Leonax" replied the girl, quickly, putting a strong emphasis upon the last name.
Then she again gazed into the distance. Phaon shook his head, and both remained silent for several minutes. At last he raised himself higher, turned his full face toward the young girl, gazed at her as tenderly and earnestly as if he wished to stamp her image upon his soul for life, gently pulled the long, floating sleeve of her peplum, and said:
"I didn't think it would be necessary--but I must ask you something."
While he spoke, Xanthe rested her right elbow on her knee, drummed on her scarlet lips with her fingers, and clasped the back of the marble bench with her out-stretched left arm.