"It was at this table," said Teuker to his mother, "that Pollux used to
sit. This evening I will bring in a lump of clay and a good piece of
modelling wax. Just put it all on the table and lay his tools by the side
of it; perhaps when he sees them he will take a fancy again to work. If
he can only make up his mind to model even a doll for the children he
will soon get into the vein again, and he will go on from small things to
great."

Teuker brought the materials, Doris set them out with the modelling
tools, and next morning watched her son's proceedings with an anxious
heart. He got up late, as he had always done since his return home, and
sat a long time over the bowl of porridge which his mother had prepared
for his breakfast. Then he sauntered across to his table, stood in front
of it awhile, broke off a piece of clay and kneaded and moulded it in his
fingers into balls and cylinders, looked at one of them more closely and
then, flinging it on the ground, he said, as he leaned across the table
supporting himself on both hands to put his face near his mother's:

"You want me to work again; but it is of no use--I could do no good with
it."

The old woman's eyes filled with tears, but she did not answer him. In
the evening Pollux begged her to put away the tools.

When he was gone to bed she did so, and while she was moving about with a
light in the dark, lumber-room in which she had kept them with other
disused things, her eye fell on the unfinished wax model which had been
the last work of her ill-starred son. A new idea struck her. She called
Euphorion, made him throw the clay into the court-yard and place the
model on the table by the side of the wax. Then she put out the very same
tools as he had been using on the fateful day of their expulsion from
Lochias, close to the cleverly-sketched portrait, and begged her husband
to go out with her quite early next morning and to remain absent till
mid-day.

"You will see," she said, "when he is standing face to face with his last
work and there is no one by to disturb him or look at him, he will find
the ends of the threads that have been cut and perhaps be able to gather
them up again and go on with the work where it was interrupted."

The mother's heart had hit upon the right idea. When Pollux had eaten his
breakfast he went to his table exactly as he had done the clay before;
but the sight of the work in hand had quite a different effect to the
mere raw clay