angry blusterer was scarcely recognizable: "There--leave me alone;
it will soon be over. I will finish this gem to-morrow, and then I must
do the Serapis I promised Theophilus, the high-priest. Nothing can come
of the Atlas. Perhaps you meant it in all sincerity, Alexander; but
since your mother left me, children, since then--my arms are no weaker
than they were; but in here--what it was that shriveled, broke, leaked
away--I can not find words for it. If you care for me--and I know you
do--you must not be vexed with me if my gall rises now and then; there
is too much bitterness in my soul. I can not reach the goal I strive
after and was meant to win; I have lost what I loved best, and where am
I to find comfort or compensation?"

His children tenderly assured him of their affection, and he allowed
Melissa to kiss him, and stroked Alexander's hair.

Then he inquired for Philip, his eldest son and his favorite; and on
learning that he, the only person who, as he believed, could understand
him, would not come to see him this day above all others, he again broke
out in wrath, abusing the degeneracy of the age and the ingratitude of
the young.

"Is it a visit which detains him again?" he inquired, and when Alexander
thought not, he exclaimed contemptuously: "Then it is some war of words
at the Museum. And for such poor stuff as that a son can forget his duty
to his father and mother!"

"But you, too, used to enjoy these conflicts of intellect," his daughter
humbly remarked; but the old man broke in:

"Only because they help a miserable world to forget the torments of
existence, and the hideous certainty of having been born only to die
some horrible death. But what can you know of this?"

"By my mother's death-bed," replied the girl, "we, too, had a glimpse
into the terrible mystery." And Alexander gravely added, "And since
we last met, father, I may certainly account myself as one of the
initiated."

"You have painted a dead body?" asked his father.

"Yes, father," replied the lad with a deep breath. "I warned you," said
Heron, in a tone of superior experience.

And then, as Melissa rearranged the folds of his blue robe, he said
he should go for a walk. He sighed as he spoke, and his children
knew whither he would go. It was to the grave to which Melissa had
accompanied him that morning; and he would visit it alone, to meditate
undisturbed on the wife he had lost.

CHAPTER II.

The brother and sister were