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 and wax. His eyes