e artist's
arm--really and properly ill.

"It must revive and delight her to have Roxana for a sister!" cried
Pollux; but his pretty companion shook her head and said: "She is always
so odd; what most delights me is averse to her."

"Well Selene is of course the moon, and you are the sun."

"And what are you?" asked Arsinoe.

"I am tall Pollux, and to-night I feel as if I might some day be great
Pollux."

"If you succeed I shall grow with you."

"That will be your right, since it is only through you that I can ever
succeed in that which I propose to do.

"And how should a simple little thing, such as I am, be able to help an
artist?"

"By living, and by loving him," cried the sculptor, lifting her up in
his arms before she could prevent him.

Outside the garden-gate the old slave-woman was sitting asleep. She had
learnt from the porter that her young mistress had been admitted with
her companion, but she herself had been forbidden to enter the grounds.
A curbstone had served her for a seat, and as she waited her eyes had
closed, in spite of the increasing noise in the street. Arsinoe did not
waken her, but asked Pollux, with a roguish laugh:

"We shall find our way alone, shall we not?"

"If Eros does not lead us astray," answered the artist. And so, as they
went on their way, they jested and exchanged little tender speeches.

The nearer they got to Lochias and to the main lines of traffic which
intersected at right angles the Canopic way--the widest and longest road
in the city--the fuller was the stream of people that flowed onwards in
the direction in which they were going; but this circumstance favored
them, for those who wish to be unobserved, when they cannot be
absolutely alone, have only to mix with the crowd. As they were borne
towards the focus and centre of the festive doings, they clung closely
together, she to him, and he to her, so that they might not be torn
apart by any of the rushing and tumultuous processions of excited
Thracian women who, faithful to their native usages, came storming by
with a young bull, on this particular night of the year, that following
the shortest day. They had hardly gone a hundred paces beyond the
Moon-street when they heard proceeding from it a wild roving song of
tipsy jollity, and loud above it the sound of drums and pipes, cymbals
and noisy shouting, and at the same time in the King's street, a road
which crossed the Bruchiom and opened on Lochias, a merry