"Folly!" cried Gorgias in an irritated tone: "May not a man admire what
is magnificent, wonderful, unique? She is all these things! Just now--
how long ago is it?--she appeared before me in a radiance of beauty--"

"Which should have made you shade both eyes. Yet you have been speaking
so warmly of your young guest, her loving caution, her gentle calmness in
the midst of peril--"

"Do you suppose I wish to recall a single syllable?" the architect
indignantly broke in. "Helena has no peer among the maidens of
Alexandria--but the other--Cleopatra--is elevated in her divine majesty
above all ordinary mortals. You might spare me and yourself that
scornful curl of the lip. Had she gazed into your face with those
tearful, sorrowful eyes, as she did into mine, and spoken of her misery,
you would have gone through fire and water, hand in hand with me, for her
sake. I am not a man who is easily moved, and since my father's death
the only tears I have seen have been shed by others; but when she talked
of the mausoleum I was to build for her because Fate, she knew not how
soon, might force her to seek refuge in the arms of death, my calmness
vanished. Then, when she cumbered me among the friends on whom she could
rely and held out her hand--a matchless hand--oh! laugh if you choose--
I felt I know not how, and kneeling at her feet I kissed it; it was wet
with my tears. I am not ashamed of this emotion, and my lips seem
consecrated since they touched the little white hand which spoke a
language of its own and stands before my eyes wherever I gaze."

Pushing back his thick locks from his brow as he spoke, he shook his head
as though dissatisfied with himself and, in an altered tone, hurriedly
continued: "But this is a time ill-suited for such ebullitions of