e, as he stood with his
eyes fixed on Arsinoe's face and figure. "Just as if she had this instant
risen from the sea--that form is just as fresh, and joyous, and healthy;
and her little curls wave back from her brow as if they were still
floating on the water; and now as she stoops, how full and supple in
every movement. It is like a daughter of Nereus following the line of the
as the waves as they rise into crests and dip again into watery valleys.
She is like Selene and her mother in the shape of her head and the Greek
cut of her face, but the elder sister is like the statue of Prometheus
before it had a soul, and Arsinoe is like the Master's work after the
celestial fire coursed through her veins."

The artist had felt 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 l