re
successful in his task her gratitude would be beyond expression.

"What more she said," Alexander went on, "I could but half understand,
for she wept all the time, and I could not collect my thoughts. It
was not till afterward that I learned from her waiting-woman--a
Christian--that she meant to tell me that the relations and wailing
women were to come to-morrow morning. I could paint on till nightfall,
but no longer. I had been chosen for the task because Seleukus had heard
from my old teacher, Bion, that I should get a faithful likeness of the
original more quickly than any one else. She may have said more, but
I heard nothing; I only saw. For when the veil no longer hid that face
from my gaze, I felt as though the gods had revealed a mystery to me
which till now only the immortals had been permitted to know. Never was
my soul so steeped in devotion, never had my heart beat in such solemn
uplifting as at that moment. What I was gazing at and had to represent
was a thing neither human nor divine; it was beauty itself--that beauty
of which I have often dreamed in blissful rapture.

"And yet--do not misapprehend me--I never thought of bewailing the
maiden, or grieving over her early death. She was but sleeping--I could
fancy: I watched one I loved in her slumbers. My heart beat high! Ay,
child, and the work I did was pure joy, such joy as only the gods on
Olympus know at their golden board. Every feature, every line was of
such perfection as only the artist's soul can conceive of, nay,
even dream of. The ecstasy remained, but my unrest gave way to an
indescribable and wordless bliss. I drew with the red chalk, and mixed
the colors with the grinder, and all the while I could not feel the
painful sense of painting a corpse. If she were slumbering, she had
fallen asleep with bright images in her memory. I even fancied again
and again that her lips moved her exquisitely chiseled mouth, and that a
faint breath played with her abundant, waving, shining brown hair, as it
does with yours.

"The Muse sped my hand and the portrait--Bion and the rest will praise
it, I think, though it is no more like the unapproachable original than
that lamp is like the evening star yonder."

"And shall we be allowed to see it?" asked Melissa, who had been
listening breathlessly to her brother's narrative.

The words seemed to have snatched the artist from a dream. He had to
pause and consider where he was and to whom he was speaking. He h