wed her, and they both met the children. Selene pulled their
dresses straight, and strictly enjoined them not to go near the corridor
on account of the strange dog. Antinous stroked the blind boy's pretty
curly head, and then, as Selene was about to descend the stairs, he
asked her:

"May I help you?"

"Yes," said the girl, for at the very first step an acute pain in the
ancle checked her, and she put out her arm to the young man that he
might support her elbow on his hand. But her answer would assuredly
have been "no," if she had had the smallest feeling of liking for the
Emperor's favorite; but she bore the image of another in her heart,
and did not even perceive that Antinous was beautiful. The Bithynian's
heart, on the other hand, had never beaten so violently as during
the brief moments when he was permitted to hold Selene's arm. He felt
intoxicated, while he was alive to the fact that during the descent of
the few steps she was suffering great pain.

"Stay at home, and spare yourself!" he begged her once more in a
trembling voice.

"You worry me!" she said, in a tone of vexation. "I must go, and it is
not far."

"May I accompany you?"

She laughed aloud and answered somewhat scornfully:

"Certainly not. Only conduct me through the corridor that the dog may
not attack me again, then go where you will--but not with me."

He obeyed when at the end of the passage where it opened into a large
hall, he bid her farewell, and she thanked him with a few friendly
words.

There were two ways out from her father's rooms into the road, one led
through the rotunda where the Ptolemaic Queens were placed, and across
several terraces up and down steps through the forecourt; the other, on
a level all the way, through the rooms and halls of the palace. She was
forced to choose the latter, for it would have been impossible for her
with her aching foot to clamber up a number of steps without help and
down them again, but she came to this conclusion much against her
will, for she knew what numbers of men were engaged in the works of
restoration; and to get through them safely it struck her that she might
ask her old playfellow to escort her through the crowd of workmen and
rough slaves as far as his parent's gatehouse. But she did not easily
decide on this course, for, since the afternoon when Pollux had shown
her mother's bust to Arsinoe before showing it to her, she had felt a
grudge towards the sculptor, who so lately be