Then he entered his sitting room, greeted Ledscha curtly, invited her to go into the studio, unlocked it, and left her there alone while he went to his chamber with the slave and had the slight wound bandaged comfortably.

While Bias was helping his master he repeated with sincere anxiety his warning against the dangerous beauty whose eyebrows, which had grown together, proved that she was possessed by the demons of the nether world.

"Yet they increase the austere beauty of her face," assented the artist. "I should not want to omit them in modelling Arachne while the goddess is transforming her into a spider! What a subject! A bolder one was scarcely ever attempted and, like you, I already see before me the coming spider."

Then, without the slightest haste, he exchanged the huntsman's chiton for the white chlamys, which was extremely becoming to his long, waving beard, and at last, exclaiming gaily, "If I stay any longer, she will transform herself into empty air instead of the spider," he went to her.




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