you, that you have suddenly forgotten how to obey?
But I insist; and rather than allow you to bring on us not trouble
merely, but shame and disgrace, I will lock you into your room!"

He seized her hand to drag her into the adjoining room. She struggled
with all her might; but he was the stronger, and he had got her as far
as the door, when the Gaul Argutis rushed, panting and breathless,
into the work-room through the anteroom, calling out to the struggling
couple:

"What are you doing? By all the gods, you have chosen the wrong time for
a quarrel! Zminis is on the way hither to take you both prisoners; he
will be here in a minute! Fly into the kitchen, girl! Dido will hide you
in the wood-store behind the hearth.-You, Philip, must squeeze into the
henhouse. Only be quick, or it will be too late!"

"Go!" cried Melissa to her brother. "Out through the kitchen window you
can get into the poultry-yard!"

She threw herself weeping into his arms, kissed him, and added,
hastily: "Whatever happens to us, I shall risk all to save my father and
Alexander. Farewell! The gods preserve us!"

She now seized Philip's wrist, as he had before grasped hers, to drag
him away; but he freed himself, saying, with an indifference which
terrified her: "Then let the worst come. Ruin may take its course. Death
rather than dishonor!"

"Madman!" the slave could not help exclaiming; and the faithful fellow,
though wont to obey, threw his arms round his master's son to drag him
away into the kitchen, while Philip pushed him off, saying:

"I will not hide, like a frightened woman!"

But the Gaul heard the approach of marching men, so, paying no further
heed to the brother, he dragged Melissa into the kitchen, where old Dido
undertook to hide her.

Philip stood panting in the studio. Through the open window he could see
the pursuers coming nearer, and the instinct of self-preservation, which
asserts itself even in the strongest, prompted him to follow the slave's
advice. But before he could reach the door, in fancy he saw himself
joining the party of philosophers airing themselves under the arcades in
the great court of the Museum; he heard their laughter and their bitter
jests at the skeptic, the independent thinker, who had sought refuge
among the fowls, who had been hauled out of the hen-house; and this
picture confirmed his determination to yield to force rather than bring
on himself the curse of ridicule. But at the same time other re