fire, and it is beyond a doubt that she gets money from the old man."

"What for?"

"Ah! you had better enquire of a priest of Aphrodite. It is nothing to
laugh at, it is scandalous, audacious!"

Thus and on this wise ran the comments with which the announcement of
Arsinoe's preferment to the part of Roxana was received, and hatred and
bitter animosity had grown up in the souls of the dealer and his
daughter. Praxilla was selected as a companion to Alexander's bride, and
she yielded without objecting, but on her way homewards she nodded assent
when her father said:

"Let things go on now as they may, but a few hours before the performance
begins, I will send them word that you are ill."

The selection of Arsinoe had however, on the other hand, given pleasure
as well as pain. Up in the middle places in the amphitheatre sat
Keraunus, his legs far apart, his face glowing, panting and choking with
sheer delight, and too haughty to draw in his feet even when the brother
of the archidikastes tried to squeeze by his bulky person which filled
two seats at once. Arsinoe, whose sharp ears had not failed to catch the
dealer's remonstrances, and the words in which brave Pollux had taken her
part, had, at first, felt dying of shame and terror, but now she felt as
though she could fly on the wings of her delight. She had never been so
happy in her life, and when she got out with her father, in the first
dark street she threw her arms round his neck, kissed both his cheeks,
and then told him how kind the lady Julia, the prefect's wife had been to
her, and that she had undertaken, with the warmest friendliness, to have