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‘Don’t lecture me like one of your students!’ she said, raising her voice sharply. ‘I am not turning to a new superstition! I don’t even know what these people believe or do when they shut themselves in for their secret practices! What I do know is the power all that has in their minds. Lalagē has turned from a girl who was gay and charming and direct into a person who sometimes seems obsessed. Despite her loving nature, she has thoughts — I don’t know how to put it — thoughts which could somehow lead to violence. She hints at a great dramatic gesture which might put right everything in the world that is wrong.’ Her voice became low and hesitant, almost inaudible. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am afraid.’
At that moment, we heard an insistent Phrygian melody plucked and beaten, forced from strings and pipes outside the garden, and something flew through the air, and landed violently within the schist wall, breaking the “inner eye” plant off at its root.
We ran to the place, and found a largish round parcel wrapped in linen and marked in paint with a strange hieroglyph.
Hermippē picked it up, still trembling, but calmly unwrapped the linen, and opened the box which it contained. When she saw the severed head within, she fainted. Philodemus turned away, and vomited. I too was nauseated, as I recognized the head of Sardon the merchant, father of Lalagē.
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