the bargain she had made; but she dared not confess the truth, and she
rued her falsehood all the more bitterly the more clearly she saw with
her own sound sense, that the Honor which had fallen upon her yesterday,
threatened to develop all her father's weaknesses in an absolutely fatal
manner.

To-day she would have been amply satisfied with pleasing Pollux, and she
would, without a regret have transferred to another her part with all the
applause and admiration it would procure her, and which, only yesterday,
had seemed to her so inestimably precious. This she said; but Keraunus
would not take the assertion in earnest, laughed in her face, went off
into mysterious allusions to the wealth which could not fail to come into
the house and--since an obscure consciousness told him that it would be
becoming him to prove that it was not solely personal vanity and self-
esteem that influenced all his proceedings--he explained that he had made
up his mind to a great sacrifice and would be content on the coming
occasion to wear his gilt fillet and not buy a pure gold one. By this
act of self-denial he fancied he had acquired a full right to devote a
very pretty little sum to the acquisition of a fine-looking slave.
Arsinoe's entreaties were unheeded, and when she began to cry with grief
at the prospect of losing her old house-mate he forbid her crossly to
shed a tear for such a cause, for it was very childish, and he would not
be pleased to conduct her with red eyes to meet the prefect's wife.

During the course of this argument his hair had got itself duly curled,
and he now desired Arsinoe to arrange her own hair nicely and then to
accompany him.

They would buy a new dress and peplum, go to see Selene, and then be
carried to the prefect's.