ame Doris, but in
the gate-keeper's house there reigned an atmosphere in which care and
anxiety could not breathe, and the light-hearted girl's vision of her
sister as tormented with pain and threatened with danger was changed in
a wonderfully short time to that of a sufferer comfortably in bed, with
only a severely-injured foot. In the place of consuming anxiety she felt
only hearty sympathy, and this sounded in her voice as she begged the
singer Euphorion to open the gate for her, because she wanted to go out
with her slave-woman to ascertain how Selene was.

Doris soothed her, repeating her assurance that the patient would be
nursed with the utmost care in dame Hannah's hands; still, she thought
her wish to see her sister very justifiable, and eagerly seconded Pollux
when he entreated Arsinoe to accept his escort; for the festival would
be beginning soon after midnight, the streets would be full of rough
and impudent people, and a bunch of feathers would be about as much use
against the drunken slaves as her black scarecrow, who had been falling
into decrepitude even before she had done the stupidest deed of her life
and roused the steward's anger against herself.

So they went along the dark streets which grew full of people the
farther they went, side by side in silence. Presently Pollux said:

"Put your arm through mine; you ought to feel that I am protecting you,
and I--I should like to feel at every step that I have found you once
more, and am allowed to be near you--so sweet a creature."

The words did not sound impertinent, on the contrary, they sounded very
much in earnest, and the sculptor's deep voice trembled with emotion
as he spoke them with deep tenderness. They knocked at the door of the
girl's heart with the urgent hand of love; she unhesitatingly put her
hand through his arm and answered softly:

"You will take care of me now."

"Yes," said he, and he took her little hand, which rested on his right
arm, in his left hand. She did not draw it away, and after they had gone
on thus for a few paces he sighed and said:

"Do you know how I feel?"

"Well!"

"Nay, I myself cannot put it into words. Rather as if I had triumphed
in the Olympian games, or as if Caesar had invested me with the
purple!--But who cares for the wealth or the purple! You are hanging
on my arm, and I have hold of your hand; compared with this, all is
as nought. If it were not for the people about I--I do not know what I
coul