"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 could do."

She looked up at him with happy content, but he lifted her hand to his
lips and pressed it to them long and fervently. Then he let it go again
and said, with a sigh that came up from the bottom of his heart:

"Oh Arsinoe, my sweet Arsinoe, how I love you!"

As the words came softly yet hotly from his lips the girl clasped his arm
closely to her bosom, leaned her head on his shoulder, looked up at him
with a wide-eyed, tender gaze, and said softly:

"Oh Pollux, I am so happy, the world is so good!"

"Nay, I could hate it!" cried the sculptor. "To hear this--and to have
an old mother wide awake at home, and to be obliged to walk steadily on
in a street crowded with men--it is unendurable! I shall not hold out
much longer--sweetest of girls--here it is quiet and dark."

Yes, in a little nook made by two contiguous houses, and into which
Pollux drew Arsinoe, it was pitch dark, as he hastily pressed his first
kiss on her innocent lips; but in their hearts it was light-radiant