f a better mistress for you--Art--to whom belongs everything
of beauty that the Most High has created--In Art in all its breadth and
fulness, not fettered and narrowed by any Agapitus."

Polykarp flung himself into his father's arms, and the stern man, hardly
master of his emotions, kissed the boy's forehead, his eyes, and his
cheeks.

CHAPTER XIV.

At noon of the following day the senator went to the women's room, and
while he was still on the threshold, he asked his wife--who was busy at
the loom:

"Where is Polykarp? I did not find him with Antonius, who is working at
the placing of the altar, and I thought I might find him here."

"After going to the church," said Dorothea, "he went up the mountain. Go
down to the workshops, Marthana, and see if your brother has come back."

Her daughter obeyed quickly and gladly, for her brother was to her the
dearest, and seemed to her to be the best, of men. As soon as the pair
were alone together Petrus said, while he held out his hand to his wife
with genial affection, "Well, mother--shake hands." Dorothea paused for
an instant, looking him in the face, as if to ask him, "Does your pride
at last allow you to cease doing me an injustice?" It was a reproach,
but in truth not a severe one, or her lips would hardly have trembled so
tenderly, as she said.

"You cannot be angry with me any longer, and it is well that all should
once more be as it ought."

All certainly had not been "as it ought," for since the husband and wife
had met in Polykarp's work-room, they had behaved to each other as if
they were strangers. In their bedroom, on the way to church, and
at breakfast, they had spoken to each no more than was absolutely
necessary, or than was requisite in order to conceal their difference
from the servants and children. Up to this time, an understanding had
always subsisted between them that had never taken form in words, and
yet that had scarcely in a single case been infringed, that neither
should ever praise one of their children for anything that the other
thought blameworthy, and vice versa.

But in this night, her husband had followed up her severest condemnation
by passionately embracing the wrong-doer. Never had she been so stern in
any circumstances, while on the other hand her husband, so long as she
could remember, had never been so softhearted and tender to his son, and
yet she had controlled herself so far, as not to contradict Petrus in
Polykarp's p