hagus; but I am to keep it two days longer, to
reproduce a second likeness more at my leisure, with the help of the
Galatea, which is to remain in Seleukus's town house.

"Then he left me alone with his wife.

"What a delightful commission! I set to work with renewed pleasure,
and more composure than at first. I had no need to hurry, for the first
picture is to be hidden in the tomb, and I could give all my care to the
second. Besides, Korinna's features were indelibly impressed on my eye.

"I generally can not paint at all by lamp-light; but this time I found
no difficulty, and I soon recovered that blissful, solemn mood which I
had felt in the presence of the dead. Only now and then it was clouded
by a sigh, or a faint moan from Berenike: 'Gone, gone! There is no
comfort--none, none!'

"And what could I answer? When did Death ever give back what he has
snatched away?

"' I can not even picture her as she was,' she murmured sadly to
herself--but this I might remedy by the help of my art, so I painted on
with increasing zeal; and at last her lamentations ceased to trouble
me, for she fell asleep, and her handsome head sank on her breast. The
watchers, too, had dropped asleep, and only their deep breathing broke
the stillness.

"Suddenly it flashed upon me that I was alone with Korinna, and the
feeling grew stronger and stronger; I fancied her lovely lips had moved,
that a smile gently parted them, inviting me to kiss them. As often as
I looked at them--and they bewitched me--I saw and felt the same, and at
last every impulse within me drove me toward her, and I could no longer
resist: my lips pressed hers in a kiss!"

Melissa softly sighed, but the artist did not hear; he went on: "And
in that kiss I became hers; she took the heart and soul of me. I can no
longer escape from her; awake or asleep, her image is before my eyes,
and my spirit is in her power."

Again he drank, emptying the cup at one deep gulp. Then he went on: "So
be it! Who sees a god, they say, must die. And it is well, for he has
known something more glorious than other men. Our brother Philip, too,
lives with his heart in bonds to that one alone, unless a demon has
cheated his senses. I am troubled about him, and you must help me."

He sprang up, pacing the room again with long strides, but his sister
clung to his arm and besought him to shake off the bewitching vision.
How earnest was her prayer, what eager tenderness rang in her every
word