ng body, and he never held himself upright. His head
was always bent forward, as if he were watching or seeking something;
and even when he had seated himself in his father's place at the
work-table to tell his tale, his hands and feet, even the muscles of his
well-formed but colorless face, were in constant movement. He would jump
up, or throw back his head to shake his long hair off his face, and his
fine, large, dark eyes glowed with wrathful fires.

"I received my first repulse from the prefect," he began, and as he
spoke, his arms, on whose graceful use the Greeks so strongly insisted,
flew up in the air as though by their own impulse rather than by the
speaker's will.

"Titianus affects the philosopher, because when he was young--long ago,
that is very certain--his feet trod the Stoa."

"Your master, Xanthos, said that he was a very sound philosopher,"
Melissa put in.

"Such praise is to be had cheap," said Philip, "by the most influential
man in the town. But his methods are old-fashioned. He crawls after
Zeno; he submits to authority, and requires more independent spirits to
do the same. To him the divinity is the Great First Cause. In this world
of ours he can discern the working of a purposeful will, and confuses
his mind with windy, worn-out ideals. Virtue, he says--but to what end
repeat such stale old stuff?"

"We have no time for it," said Melissa, who saw that Philip was on the
point of losing himself in a philosophical dissertation, for he had
begun to enjoy the sound of his own voice, which was, in fact, unusually
musical.

"Why not?" he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, and with a bitter
smile. "When he has shot away all his arrows, the bowman may rest; and,
as you will soon hear, our quiver is empty--as empty as this cup which I
have drained."

"No, no!" exclaimed Melissa, eagerly. "If this first attempt has failed,
that is the very reason for planning another. I, too, can use figures of
speech. The archer who is really eager to hit the object on which he has
spent his arrows, does not retire from the fight, but fetches more; and
if he can find none, he fights with his bow, or falls on the enemy with
stones, fists, and teeth."

Philip looked at her in astonishment, and exclaimed in pleased surprise,
without any of the supercilious scorn which he commonly infused into his
tone when addressing his humble sister:

"Listen to our little girl! Where did those gentle eyes get that
determined f