oke her mother's bust. At last she dreamed that she herself was
playing--as in the days of her childhood--in the gate-keeper's garden
with the sculptor. They were making cakes of sand together, and Arsinoe
jumped on the cakes as soon as they were made, and trod them all into
dust.

The pretty pale girl had for a long time ceased to know the refreshing,
dreamless, sound sleep of youth, for the sweetest slumbers are more apt
to seek out those who by day have some rest, than those who are worn
out by fatigue, and evening after evening Selene was one of these. Every
night she had dreams, but tonight they were almost exclusively sad in
character, and so terrifying that she woke herself repeatedly with her
own groaning, or disturbed Arsinoe's peaceful sleep by loud cries.

These cries did not disturb her father, he--to-night, as every
night--had begun to snore soon after he had gone to rest, never to cease
till it was time to rise again.

Selene was always busy in the house before any one, even before the
slaves; and the approach of day this time seemed to the sleepless girl
a real release. When she rose it was still perfectly dark, but she knew
that the rising of the December sun could not be long to wait for.

Without paying any heed to the sleepers, or making any special effort to
tread noiselessly, or to do what she had to do without disturbing them,
she lighted her little lamp, at the night-lamp, washed herself, arranged
her hair, and then knocked at the doors of the old slaves.

As soon as they had yawned out "directly," or a sleepy "very well," she
went into her father's room and took his jug to fetch him fresh water in
it. The best well in the palace was on a small terrace on the west
side; it was supplied by the city aqueducts, and was constructed of five
marble monsters, bearing up on twisted fishtails a huge shell, in which
sat a bearded river-god. Their horse-shaped heads poured water into a
vast basin, which, in the lapse of centuries, had grown full of a green
and filmy vegetation.

In order to reach this fountain, Selene had to go along the corridor
where lay the rooms occupied by the Emperor and his followers. She only
knew that an architect from Rome had taken up his quarters at Lochias,
for, some time after midnight, she had been to get out meat and salt
for him, but in what rooms the strangers had been lodged no one had told
her. But this morning as she followed the path she was accustomed to
tread da