elt and thought all this out in a few seconds, but the
girl found her speechless admirer's silence too long, and exclaimed
impatiently:

"You have not yet offered me any proper greeting. What are you doing
down there?"

"Look here," he replied, lifting the cloth from the portrait, which was
a striking likeness.

Arsinoe leaned far over the parapet of the balcony, shaded her eyes with
her hand and was silent for more than a minute. Then she suddenly cried
out loudly and exclaiming:

"Mother--it is my mother!" She flew into the room behind her.

"Now she will call her father and destroy all poor Selene's comfort,"
thought Pollux, as he pushed the heavy marble bust on which his gypsum
head was fixed, into its right place.

"Well, let him come. We are the masters here now, and Keraunus dare not
touch the Emperor's property." He crossed his arms and stood gazing at
the bust, muttering to himself:

"Patchwork--miserable patchwork. We are cobbling up a robe for the
Emperor out of mere rags; we are upholsterers and not artists. If it
were only for Hadrian, and not for Diotima and her children, not another
finger would I stir in the place."

The path from the steward's residence led through some passages and up
a few steps to the rotunda, on which the sculptor was standing, but in
little more than a minute from Arsinoe's disappearance from the balcony
she was by his side. With a heightened color she pushed the sculptor
away from his work and put herself in the place where he had been
standing, to be able to gaze at her leisure at the beloved features.
Then she exclaimed again:

"It is mother--mother!" and the bright tears ran over her cheeks,
without restraint from the presence of the artist, or the laborers and
slaves whom she had flown past on her way, and who stared at her with as
much alarm as if she were possessed.

Pollux did not disturb her. His heart was softened as he watched the
tears running down the cheeks of this light-hearted child, and he could
not help reflecting that goodness was indeed well rewarded when it could
win such tender and enduring love as was cherished for the poor dead
mother on the pedestal before him.

After looking for some time at the sculptor's work Arsinoe grew calmer,
and turning to Pollux she asked:

"Did you make it?"

"Yes," he replied, looking down.

"And entirely from memory?"

"To be sure."

"Do you know what?"

"Well."

"This shows that the Sibyl at the festiv