And when she turned to the statue of Hygeia she fancied the beautiful, kind face nodded to her with a pledge of fulfillment.
She raised her beseeching arms higher still, and addressed her sculptured friends aloud, as though they could hear her: "I know that nothing is hidden from you, eternal gods," she began, "and when it was your will that my mother should be taken from me my foolish heart rebelled.

But I was then a child without understanding, and my soul lay as it were asleep.

Now it is different.

You know that I have learned to love a man; and many things, and, the certainty that the gods are good, have come to me with that love.

Forgive the maid the sins of the child, and make my lover whole, as he lies under the protection and in the sanctuary of the great Serapis, still needing your aid too.