t he was long since
replete, she pushed two more pots on to the fire, for he must have been
half-starved in prison, and what he did not want now he would find room
for two hours hence. Euphorion himself conducted Pollux to the bath in
the evening, and as they went home together he never for an instant left
his side; the sense of being near him did him good and was like some
comfortable physical sensation.

The singer was not usually inquisitive, but on this occasion he never
ceased asking questions till Doris led her son to the bed she had freshly
made for him. After the artist had gone to rest, the old woman once more
slipped into his room, kissed his forehead, and said:

"To-day you have still been thinking too much of that hideous prison--but
to-morrow my boy, to-morrow you will be the same as before, will you
not?"

"Only leave me alone mother; I shall soon be better," he replied. "This
bed is as good as a sleeping-draught; the plank in the prison was quite a
different thing."

"You have never asked once for your Arsinoe," said Doris.

"What can she matter to me? Only let me sleep." But the next morning
Pollux was just the same as he had been the previous evening, and as the
days went on his condition remained unchanged. His head drooped on his
breast, he never spoke but when he was spoken to, and when Doris or
Euphorion tried to talk to him of the future, he would ask: "Am I a
burden to you?" or begged them not to worry him.

Still, he was gentle and kind, took his sister's children in his arms,
played with the Graces, whistled to the birds, went in and out, and
played a valiant part at every meal. Now and again he would ask after
Arsinoe. Once he allowed himself to be guided to the house where she
lived, but he would not knock at Paulina's door and seemed overawed by
the grandeur of the house. After he had been brooding and dreaming for a
week, so idle, listless, and absent that his mother's heart was filled
with anxious fears every time she looked at him, his brother Teuker hit
upon a happy idea.

The young gem-cutter was not usually a frequent visitor to his parents'
house, but since the return of the hapless Pollux he called there almost
daily. His apprenticeship was over and he seemed on the high-road to
become a great master in his art; nevertheless he esteemed his brother's
gifts as far beyond his own and had tried to devise some means of
reawakening the dormant energies of the luckless man's brain.