oke off in his invocation, and dropped his arms, for he
heard approaching footsteps. Smiling at his childish weakness--for such
he deemed it that he should have prayed--and yet content from his pious
impulse, he turned his back on the sun, now quite risen, and stood face
to face with Irene who called out to him:

"I was beginning to think that you had got out of patience and had gone
away, when I found you no longer by the well. That distressed me--but
you were only watching Helios rise. I see it every day, and yet it
always grieves me to see it as red as it was to-day, for our Egyptian
nurse used to tell me that when the east was very red in the morning it
was because the Sun-god had slain his enemies, and it was their blood
that colored the heavens, and the clouds and the hills."

"But you are a Greek," said Lysias, "and you must know that it is Eos
that causes these tints when she touches the horizon with her rosy
fingers before Helios appears. Now to-day you are, to me, the rosy dawn
presaging a fine day."

"Such a ruddy glow as this," said Irene, "forebodes great heat, storms,
and perhaps heavy rain, so the gatekeeper says; and he is always with
the astrologers who observe the stars and the signs in the heavens from
the towers near the temple-gates. He is poor little Philo's father. I
wanted to bring Klea with me, for she knows more about our parents than
I do; but he begged me not to call her away, for the child's throat is
almost closed up, and if it cries much the physician says it will choke,
and yet it is never quiet but when it is lying in Klea's arms. She is so
good--and she never thinks of herself; she has been ever since midnight
till now rocking that heavy child on her lap."

"We will talk with her presently," said the Corinthian. "But to-day it
was for your sake that I came; you have such merry eyes, and your
little mouth looks as if it were made for laughing, and not to sing
lamentations. How can you bear being always in that shut up dungeon with
all those solemn men in their black and white robes?"

"There are some very good and kind ones among them. I am most fond of
old Krates, he looks gloomy enough at every one else; but with me only
he jokes and talks, and he often shows me such pretty and elegantly
wrought things."

"Ah! I told you just now you are like the rosy dawn before whom all
darkness must vanish."

"If only you could know how thoughtless I can be, and how often I give
trouble to K