Suddenly a sunbeam slipping between two columns shot into the face and youthful breast of the young girl. Throwing bow and arrows aside in sudden bedazzlement, she hid her face in her hands.
Swallows, uttering their faint fine chirpings, undulated about the exercise-ground, and pursuing each other vanished into the blue of the sky.
She uncovered her face and raised her arms above her head.
Its fair hair, golden at its ends as honey in the sun, at its roots was auburn; her lips half opened in a happy smile, she suffered the sun to bathe her body, gliding lower and lower yet, till she stood clothed, as in the loveliest raiment, in pure light and beauty.
"Myrrha," the girl murmured slowly and dreamily, "look at the sky! How beautiful it would be to bathe in it, like those birds! Do you remember our saying that men could not be happy because they had no wings? When I look at the birds I am consumed with envy. One should be light and bare as I am at this moment, and winging high up in the sky, and knowing that one could fly forever--that there should be nothing else but sky and sun about one's light and free and naked body!"
Drawing herself up to her full height with outstretched arms she sighed deeply, as at some remembered joy fled away for ever.
The burning caress of the sun now reached her waist. Suddenly she shivered and grew ashamed, as if some living and passionate being had approached her. With one hand she shielded her breast, with the other the abdomen, the immortal gesture of Aphrodite of Cnidos.
"Meroë, give me my clothes! quick, Meroë!" she exclaimed, with eyes wide open and startled.
Julian never remembered how he came forth from the wrestling-ground; his heart was on fire. The poet's face was solemn as that of a man quitting a temple.
"Perhaps a Christian might find it a temptation?"
"There was nothing of temptation there for me. Do you understand?"
And again they found themselves on the dusty high road, where the sun was already hot, and bent their steps towards Athens.
Publius continued in an undertone, as it were talking to himself--
"Oh, how shameful, how deformed we are nowadays! Ashamed of our own morose and pitiful nakedness, we hide it because we feel ugly and impure. Whereas of old time.... Ah! there was a time when all was very different. Julian, the young girls of Sparta used to go out upon the wrestling-ground naked and haughty before all the people. Nobody feared temptation in those days. Folk were simple as children--as gods! And to think that nevermore shall that happen again; that the freedom, the cleanness, of that happy state shall be seen on earth no more!"