CHAPTER VIII.
While waiting in the studio Ledscha had used the time to satisfy her curiosity.
What was there not to be seen! On pedestals and upon the boards of the floor, on boxes, racks, and along the wall, stood, lay, or hung the greatest variety of articles: plaster casts of human limbs and parts of the bodies of animals, male and female, of clay and wax, withered garlands, all sorts of sculptor's tools, a ladder, vases, cups and jars for wine and water, a frame over which linen and soft woollen materials were spread, a lute and a zither, several seats, an armchair, and in one corner a small table with three dilapidated book rolls, writing tablets, metal styluses, and reed pens.
All these articles were arranged haphazard, and showed that Bias possessed more wisdom than care in the use of duster and broom.
It would have been difficult to count the number of things brought together here, but the unusually long, wide room was by no means crowded.
Ledscha cast a wondering glance sometimes at one object, sometimes at another, but without understanding its meaning or its use.
The huge figure on the pedestal in the middle of the studio, upon which the full glare of light fell through the open windows, was certainly the statue of the goddess on which Hermon was working; but a large gray cloth concealed it from her gaze.
How tall it was! When she looked at it more closely she felt small and oppressed by comparison.
A passionate longing urged her to remove the cloth, but the boldness of the act restrained her.

After she had taken another survey of the spacious apartment, which she was visiting for the first time by daylight, the torturing feeling of being neglected gained possession of her.
She clinched her white teeth more firmly, and when there was a noise at the door that died away again without bringing the man she expected, she went up to the statue which she had already walked past quietly several times and, obeying an impatient impulse, freed it from its covering.
The goddess, now illumined by the sunlight, shone before her in gleaming yellow gold and snowy ivory.
She had never seen such a statue, and drew back dazzled.
What a master was the man who had deceived her trusting heart! He had created a Demeter; the wheat in her hand showed it.
How beautiful this work was--and how valuable! It produced a powerful impression upon her mind, wholly unaccustomed to the estimate of such things.
The goddess before her was the very one whose statue stood in the temple of Demeter, and to whom she also sacrificed, with the Greeks in Tennis, when danger threatened the harvest.

Involuntarily she removed the lower veil from her face and raised her hand in prayer.
Meanwhile she gazed into the pallid face, carved from ivory, of the immortal dispenser of blessings, and suddenly the blood crimsoned her cheeks, the nostrils of her delicate, slightly arched nose rose and fell more swiftly, for the countenance of the goddess--she was not mistaken--was that of the Alexandrian whom she had just watched so intently, and for whose sake Hermon had left her in the lurch the evening before.
Now, too, she remembered for what purpose the sculptor was said to have lured Gula, the sailor's wife, and her own young sister Taus, to his studio, and in increasing excitement she drew the cloth also from the bust beside the Demeter.
Again the Alexandrian's face--the likeness was even more unmistakable than in the goddess.
The Greek girl alone occupied his thoughts.

Hermon had disdained to model the Biamite's head.
What could the others, or she herself, be to him, since he loved the rich foreigner in the tent outside, and her alone?
How firmly her image must have been impressed upon his soul, that he could reproduce the features of the absent one with such lifelike fidelity! Yet with what bold assurance he had protested that his heart belonged solely to her.

But she thought that she now perceived his purpose.