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Odacis presented the jewel-casket, within which precious stones lay shimmering like restless and glistening fish. The Greek woman's pointed fingers lifted with indifference the heap of collars, rings, and pendants, which, like all Grecian jewelry, were more valuable on account of the workmanship of the artists than for the richness of the material.

Actæon was conducted to the bath by two young slaves, and as he emerged from this he again met Odacis, who bade him enter the library beyond the peristyle. It was a great room paved with mosaic representing the triumph of Bacchus. The young god, beautiful as a woman, nude, and crowned with vines and roses, was riding on a panther, waving his thyrsus.

Passion had swept its fiery tongue over her without consuming her; she had lived in the midst of its ardor, cold, emotionless, and white, like a marble statue in the warmth of the sun. Seeing herself young, still beautiful, and with a virginal freshness, she smiled, pleased with herself, content with life. "Odacis! Odacis!"

One who was almost a child, wrapped in a mantle of broad stripes, knelt on the floor holding a great engraved bronze mirror in which Sónnica gazed at herself down to her thighs. Another arranged the toilet articles on the tables, and Odacis began to smooth her mistress' splendid hair with ivory combs. Meanwhile, the other slave approached with a bronze patera filled with a gray ointment.

Odacis, with silver tweezers in her hand, carefully inspected her mistress' body, with the attentive and frowning brow of the artist preparing a great work.

Odacis painted her face white, and then, moistening a small wooden style with attar of roses, she thrust it into a bronze pot decorated with garlands of lotus and filled with a dark powder. It was the kohol, sold by Egyptian merchants at a fabulous price.

Sónnica passively assisted these toilet preparations, which made her momentarily ugly in order that she might reappear each day more beautiful. Odacis continued combing her hair.

She left her bath breathing with happy, childlike thrills, while her hair scattered a light shower at every step. Odacis called, and three slaves entered; they were those who assisted at their mistress' toilet, the tractatrices in charge of the massage of the body.

She descended three steps and threw herself into the jasper piscina swinging her arms and splashing the water into tiny pearls. In the green pool her body assumed an ideal transparency, the glow of a fantastic apparition, and she moved from one side of the tank to the other like a siren with pearly back and floating hair. "Who has come, Odacis?" she asked, lying deep in the bath.

To add more expression to the countenance, Odacis decorated her mistress with small patches, and then she proceeded to bind around her body the fascia, or corset of the epoch, a broad woolen band to support the breast. Sónnica, gazing into the burnished bronze, smiled at her statue-like reflection, as beautiful as Venus in repose. "Which costume, my mistress?" asked Odacis.