, as she entreated him to tell her when and where her elder brother,
too, had met the daughter of Seleukus!

The artist's soft heart was easily moved. Stroking the hair of
the loving creature at his side--so helpful as a rule, but now
bewildered--he tried to calm her by affecting a lighter mood than he
really felt, assuring her that he should soon recover his usual good
spirits. She knew full well, he said, that his living loves changed in
frequent succession, and it would be strange indeed if a dead one could
bind him any longer. And his adventure, so far as it concerned the house
of Seleukus, ended with that kiss; for the lady Berenike had presently
waked, and urged him to finish the portrait at his own house.

Next morning he had completed it with the help of the Galatea in the
villa at Kanopus, and he had heard a great deal about the dead maiden.
A young woman who was left in charge of the villa had supplied him with
whatever he needed. Her pretty face was swollen with weeping, and it was
in a voice choked with tears that she had told him that her husband, who
was a centurion in Caesar's pretorian guard, would arrive to-morrow or
next day at Alexandria, with his imperial master. She had not seen him
for a long time, and had an infant to show him which he had not yet
seen; and yet she could not be glad, for her young mistress's death had
extinguished all her joy.

"The affection which breathed in every word of the centurion's wife,"
Alexander said, "helped me in my work. I could be satisfied with the
result.

"The picture is so successful that I finished that for Seleukus in all
confidence, and for the sarcophagus I will copy it as well or as ill as
time will allow. It will hardly be seen in the half-dark tomb, and how
few will ever go to see it! None but a Seleukus can afford to employ
so costly a brush as your brother's is--thank the Muses! But the second
portrait is quite another thing, for that may chance to be hung next a
picture by Apelles; and it must restore to the parents so much of their
lost child as it lies in my power to give them. So, on my way, I made up
my mind to begin the copy at once by lamp-light, for it must be ready by
to-morrow night at latest.

"I hurried to my work-room, and my slave placed the picture on an easel,
while I welcomed my brother Philip who had come to see me, and who had
lighted a lamp, and of course had brought a book. He was so absorbed in
it that he did not observe that