noble friends!
Greet your bridegroom from me, my child. His work belongs to me. Pollux
will be the first among his fellow-artists, and it has been my privilege
to discover this new star--the eighth artist whose merit I have detected
while he was still unknown. Your future brother-in-law too, Teuker,
will turn out well. I am having a stone cut by him with a portrait of
Antinous. Once more farewell; I must go to the Council. We shall have to
discuss the subject of a temple to the new divinity. Move on you two!"

An hour after Plutarch had quitted the prefect's house Julia's chariot
was standing at the entrance of a lane, much too narrow to admit a
vehicle with horses, and which ended in a little plot on which stood
Euphorion's humble house. Julia's outrunners easily found out the
residence of the sculptor's parents, led the matron and Arsinoe to the
spot, and showed them the door they should knock at.

"What a color you have, my little girl!" said Julia. "Well, I will not
intrude on your meeting, but I should like to deliver you with my own
hand into those of your future mother. Go to that little house, Arctus,
and beg dame Doris to step out here. Only say that some one wishes to
speak with her, but do not mention my name."

Arsinoe's heart beat so violently that she was incapable of saying a
word of thanks to her kind protectress. "Step behind this palm-tree,"
said the lady. Arsinoe obeyed; but she felt as though it was some
outside volition, and not her own, that guided her to her hiding-place.
She heard nothing of the first words spoken by the Roman lady and Doris.
She only saw the dear old face of her Pollux's mother, and in spite of
her reddened eyes and the wrinkles which trouble had furrowed in her
face, she could not tire of looking at it. It reminded her of the
happiest days of her childhood, and she longed to rush forward and throw
her arms round the neck of the kindly, good-hearted woman. Then she
heard Julia say: "I have brought her to you. She is just as sweet and
as maidenly and lovely as she was the first time we saw her in the
theatre."

"Where is she? Where is she?" asked Doris in a trembling voice.

Julia pointed to the palm, and was about to call Arsinoe, but the girl
could no longer restrain her longing to fall on the neck of some one
dear to her, for Pollux had come out of the door to see who had asked
for his mother, and to see him and to fly to his breast with a cry of
joy had been one and the