Chapter Twenty-Two
Eurydice was bored. Being a temple maiden was not as much fun as she had supposed. She wondered, not for the first time, why they were called maidens, since their principal function was to provide the one service which a true maiden could never deliver. But what else could they be called? Girls? Not dignified enough. Women? Too ordinary. So maiden it was, though Eurydice had not been such even before she had come here.
There weren’t a lot of donors. The temple wasn’t fashionable, being a long way from a town, and halfway up a mountain. Some other temples were bigger, had more maidens, and perhaps more beautiful ones. So far today no one had called. Sometimes, when times were slack, Eurydice fooled around with Niobe, another of the maidens. Strictly speaking maidens wer
