Then, after lamenting their hard fate, they agreed, that next
night, when all was still, they would slip away from watchful
eyes, leave their dwellings and walk out into the fields; and to
insure a meeting, repair to a well-known edifice standing without
the city's bounds, called the Tomb of Ninus, and that the one who
came first should await the other at the foot of a certain tree.
It was a white mulberry tree, and stood near a cool spring. All
was agreed on, and they waited impatiently for the sun to go down
beneath the waters and night to rise up from them. Then cautiously
Thisbe stole forth, unobserved by the family, her head covered
with a veil, made her way to the monument and sat down under the
tree. As she sat alone in the dim light of the evening she
descried a lioness, her jaws reeking with recent slaughter,
approaching the fountain to slake her thirst. Thisbe fled at the
sight, and sought refuge in the hollow of a rock. As she fled she
dropped her veil. The lioness after drinking at the spring turned
to retreat to the woods, and seeing the veil on the ground, tossed
and rent it with her bloody mouth.
Pyramus, having been delayed, now approached the place of meeting.
He saw in the sand the footsteps of the lion, and the color fled
from his cheeks at the sight. Presently he found the veil all rent
and bloody.
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