"So be it! Who sees a god, they say, must die. And it is well, for he
has known something more glorious than other men. Our brother Philip,
too, lives with his heart in bonds to that one alone, unless a demon has
cheated his senses. I am troubled about him, and you must help me."

He sprang up, pacing the room again with long strides, but his sister
clung to his arm and besought him to shake off the bewitching vision.
How earnest was her prayer, what eager tenderness rang in her every word,
as she entreated him to tell her when and where her elder brother, too,
had met the daughter of Seleukus!

The artist's soft heart was easily moved. Stroking the hair of the
loving creature at his side--so helpful as a rule, but now bewildered
--he tried to calm her by affecting a lighter mood than he really felt,
assuring her that he should soon recover his usual good spirits. She
knew full well, he said, that his living loves changed in frequent
succession, and it would be strange indeed if a dead one could bind him
any longer. And his adventure, so far as it concerned the house of
Seleukus, ended with that kiss; for the lady Berenike had presently
waked, and urged him to finish the portrait at his own house.

Next morning he had completed it with the help of the Galatea in the
villa at Kanopus, and he had heard a great deal about the dead maiden.
A young woman who was left in charge of the villa had supplied him with
whatever he needed. Her pretty face was swollen with weeping, and it was
in a voice choked with tears that she had told him that her husband, who
was a centurion in Caesar's pretorian guard, would arrive to-morrow or
next day at Alexandria, with his imperial master. She had not seen him
for a long time, and had an infant to show him which he had not yet seen;
and yet she could not be glad, for her young mistress's death had