osing.

When he had once talked and drunk himself into the right mood, life would
wear a less gloomy face.

No! It should once more be a gay and reckless one.

And Althea?

He would meet her, with whom he had once caroused and revelled madly
enough in the intoxication of the last Dionysia, and, instead of allowing
himself to be fooled any longer and continuing to bow respectfully before
her, would assert all the rights she had formerly so liberally granted.

He would enjoy to-day, forget to-morrow, and be gay with the gay.

Eager for new pleasure, he drew a long breath as he went out into the
open air, pressed his hands upon his broad chest, and with his eyes fixed
upon the commandant of Pelusium's galley, bedecked with flags, walked
swiftly toward the landing place.

Suddenly from the deck, shaded by an awning, the loud laugh of a woman's
shrill voice reached his ear, blended with the deeper tones of the
grammateus, whose attacks on the previous night Hermon had not forgotten.

He stopped as if the laugh had pierced him to the heart. Proclus appeared
to be on the most familiar terms with Althea, and to meet him with the
Thracian now seemed impossible. He longed for mirth and pleasure, but was
unwilling to share it with these two. As he dared not disturb Myrtilus,
there was only one place where he could find what he needed, and this
was--he had said so to himself when he turned his back on his sleeping
friend--in Daphne's society.

Only yesterday he would have sought her without a second thought, but
to-day Althea's declaration that he was the only man whom the daughter of
Archias loved stood between him and his friend.

He knew that from childhood she had watched his every step with sisterly
affection. A hundred times she had proved her loyalty; yet, dear as she
was to him, willingly as he would have risked his life to save her from a
danger, it had never entered his mind to give the tie that united them
the name of love.

An older relative of both in Alexandria had once advised him, when he was
complaining of his poverty, to seek her hand, but his pride of manhood
rebelled against having the wealth which fate denied flung into his lap
by a woman. When she looked at him with her honest eyes, he could never
have brought himself to feign anything, least of all a passion of which,
tenderly attached to her though he had been for years, hitherto he had
known nothing.

"Do you love her?" Hermon asked himself as