I glanced apprehensively at
my companion, and met a quiet, inscrutable smile; and at that moment she
halted outside a wall-case and faced me.
"This is my friend," she said. "Let me present you to Artemidorus, late
of the Fayyum. Oh, don't smile!" she pleaded. "I am quite serious. Have
you never heard of pious Catholics who cherish a devotion to some
long-departed saint? That is my feeling towards Artemidorus, and if you
only knew what comfort he has shed into the heart of a lonely woman;
what a quiet, unobtrusive friend he has been to me in my solitary,
friendless days, always ready with a kindly greeting on his gentle,
thoughtful face, you would like him for that alone. And I want you to
like him and to share our silent friendship. Am I very silly, very
sentimental?"
A wave of relief had swept over me, and the mercury of my emotional
thermometer, which had shrunk almost into the bulb, leaped up to summer
heat. How charming it was of her and how sweetly intimate, to wish to
share this mystical friendship with me! And what a pretty conceit it
was, too, and how like this strange, inscrutable maiden, to come here
and hold silent converse with this long-departed Greek.
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