to her in silence and
then said in a quite altered tone:

"I am truly sorry to hear it. Let us put some cold water on his
forehead, and until the slaves come back again I will change the wet
cloth every quarter of an hour. Here is a jar and a handkerchief--good,
they might have been left on purpose. Perhaps, too, it will wake him,
and if not the people shall carry him to his own rooms."

"Disgraceful, disgraceful!" sighed the girl.

"Not at all; the high-priest of Serapis even is sometimes unwell. Only
let me see to it."

"It will excite him afresh if he sees you. He is so angry with you--so
very angry."

"Omnipotent Zeus, what harm have I done you, fat father! The gods
forgive the sins of the wise, and a man will not forgive the fault
committed by a stupid lad in a moment of imprudence."

"You mocked at him."

"I set a clay head that was like him on the shoulders of the fat Silenus
near the gate, that had lost its own head. It was my first piece of
independent work."

"But you did it to vex my father."

"Certainly not, Selene; I was delighted with the joke and nothing more."

"But you knew how touchy he is."

"And does a wild boy of fifteen ever reflect on the consequences of his
audacity? If he had but given me a thrashing his annoyance would have
discharged itself like thunder and lightning, and the air would have
been clear again. But, as it was, he cut the face off the work with a
knife, and deliberately trod the pieces under foot as they lay on the
ground. He gave me one single blow--with his thumb--which I still feel,
it is true, and then he treated me and my parents with such scorn, so
coldly and hardly, with such bitter contempt--"

"He never is really violent, but wrath seems to eat him inwardly, and I
have rarely seen him so angry as he was that time."

"But if he had only settled the account with me on the spot! but my
father was by, and hot words fell like rain, and my mother added her
share, and from that time there has been utter hostility between our
little house and you up here. What hurt me most was that you and your
sister were forbidden to come to see us and to play with me."

"That has spoilt many pleasant hours for me, too."

"It was nice when we used to dress up in my father's theatrical finery
and cloaks."

"And when you made us dolls out of clay.".

"Or when we performed the Olympian games."

"I was always the teacher when we played at school with our little
brothers and