t hand, carrying it in her right; the flame blown about by
the draught and her own figure were mirrored here and there in the
polished surface of the dark marble. The thick sandals she had tied on to
her feet roused loud echoes in the empty rooms as they fell on the stone
pavements, and terror possessed Selene's anxious soul. Her fingers
trembled as they held the lamp and her heart beat audibly as, with bated
breath, she went through the cupolaed hall in which Ptolemy Euergetes
'the fat' was said, some years ago, to have murdered his own son, and in
which even a deep breath roused an echo.

But even in this room she did not forget to look to the right and left
for her father. She breathed a sigh of relief when she perceived a streak
of light which shone through the gaping rift of a cracked side-door of
the hall of the Muses and fell in a broken reflection on the floor and
the wall of the last room through which she had to pass. She now entered
the large hall which was dimly lighted by the lamps behind the sculptor's
screen, and by several tapers, now burnt down low. These were standing on
a table knocked together out of blocks of wood and planks at the extreme
end of the hall, and behind this her father was sound asleep.

The deep notes brought out of the sleeper's broad chest, were echoed in a
very uncanny way from the bare walls of the vast empty room, and she was
frightened by them and still more by the long black shadows of the
pillars, that lay, like barriers, across her path. She stood listening in
the middle of the hall and soon recognized in the alarming tones a sound
that was only too familiar. Without a moment's hesitation she started to
run, and hastened to the sleeper, shook him, pushed him, called him,
sprinkled his forehead with water, and appealed to him by the tenderest
names with which her sister Arsinoe was wont to coax him. When, in spite
of all this, he neither spoke nor stirred, she flung the full light of
the lamp on his face. Then she thought she perceived that a bluish tinge
had overspread his bloated features, and she broke into the deep,
agonized, weeping which, a few hours previously had touched the
architect's heart.

There was a sudden stir behind the screens which enclosed the sculptor
and the work in progress. Pollux had been working for a long time with
zeal and pleasure, but at last the steward's snoring had begun to disturb
him. The body of the Muse had already taken a definite form an