At times her sorrow was made more bitter by doubts that forced themselves upon her mind in spite of her repeated resolve not to admit them. They whispered that Clearchus had given her up for lost and had forgotten her. Perhaps at first, they said, he had been eager in his search; but when all his efforts were in vain and he could find no trace of her, he had become gradually resigned to her loss, occupied as he was with the cares of his estate. Why else had he paid no heed to her letters?
When such evil ideas tormented her, Artemisia could no longer endure the sight of the glancing sails and the quivering waters of the harbor. She hid her face in her hands and her embroidery slipped unheeded to the floor.
But always she put the black thoughts from her and turned again to her faith in her lover. He was brave and true. It could not be that he had forgotten. It must be that her letters had never reached him. Then she pictured him wandering in distant lands in search of her, or sailing from city to city in hope of finding the men who had taken her away. When in this mood, she would watch every sail as it emerged from the misty distance in the belief that it might be bringing him to her at last. But as the days went by her cheeks lost their roundness and shadows darkened beneath her eyes. Her gaze grew more wistful and unconsciously more hopeless as she looked out upon the harbor, and more and more her hands lay idle in her lap.
Day after day her thoughts trod the same round. "He will come to-day," she said to herself in the morning. "Surely, to-day he is coming." Her pulses quickened at every footfall, and she started at every strange voice. When twilight fell and he had not come she whispered to herself: "He will come to-morrow!" but to-morrow faded into yesterday and he came not.
Gradually her gentle spirit lost its courage and its hope under the repeated buffets of disappointment. She drooped like a flower whose roots can find no water, and even her nightly prayer to Artemis, the Virgin Goddess, failed at last to bring peace to her troubled mind.
One morning she was aroused from the lethargy into which she had fallen by a change in the scene with which she had become so monotonously familiar. Instead of the usual merchant ships, the harbor was filled with warlike vessels with brazen beaks and banks of oars on either side. The wharves were covered with soldiers in armor. Hundreds of men were unloading bales and boxes which were being carried to the Acropolis, to the Citadel of Salmacis, or to the Royal Citadel.