However that might be, now, as she closed her eyes and shut out the view
of the costly adornments around her, more vividly than ever before were
pictured before her mind the scenes of her childhood: her father's
cottage on the outskirts of Ostia--the olive grove upon the slope
behind--the roadside well, where the villagers would sometimes gather
about some invalided soldier from the German army, and listen to his
tales of the last campaign--and in front, the bay, sparkling in the
bright glare of the sun and laden with the corn-freighted ships of
Alexandria.
And there, too, was the old wave-worn rock--the scene of her life's only
romance--where, stealing out from her father's cabin at the evening
hour, and seating herself so close to the waterline that the spray of
the tideless sea would dash up and bathe her naked feet, she would wait
in all innocence for the coming of the young sailor from Samos. How
rapidly those hours used to pass! How pleadingly, on the last evening,
he had knelt beside her, with his arm resting upon her knee, and there,
gazing up into her face, had asked her for one long tress of hair! How
foolish she had been to give it to him; and how earnestly he had vowed
that he would come back some day, no longer poor and forlorn, but in his
own two-masted vessel, with full banks of oars, manned by the slaves
whom he would capture, and would then bear her away unto his own home!
And how, like a silly girl, she had believed him, as though wandering
sailor boys ever did come back to seek the loving hearts which had
trusted them! And so the year had passed away, and, as she might well
have known from the first, he had not returned.
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