"Look now, how she bends her arm, and what a lovely attitude as she puts
her hand to her head!"

"Go--" said Arsinoe. "You ought not to be spying here."

"Directly, directly--but if you were lying there no power should stir me
from the spot. How carefully Hannah lifts the wet wrapper from her poor
broken ankle. You could not touch your eye more gently than the good
woman handles Selene's foot."

"Go back, she is looking straight this way."

"What a wonderful face! It would do for a Penelope, but there is
something singular in her eyes. Now if I had to make another star-gazing
Urania, or a Sappho full of the deity, and with eyes fixed on the heavens
in poetic rapture, that is what I would put into her! She is no longer
young, but how pure her face is! It is like a sky when the wind has
swept it clear of clouds."

"Seriously you must go now," said Arsinoe drawing away her hand, which he
had again taken. Pollux saw that his praise of another woman's beauty
annoyed her, and he said soothingly:

"Be easy child. You have not your match here in Alexandria, no, nor so
far as Greek is spoken. A perfectly clear sky is certainly not the most
beautiful to my taste. Pure light, and pure blue, give no satisfaction
to the artist, it is only behind a few moving clouds, lighted up by
changing gleams of gold and silver, that the firmament has any true
charm, and though your face too is like heaven to me it does not lack
sweet movement, never twice alike. Now this matron--"