The return of this rare couple to their home would have afforded an excellent opportunity for gay festivities.  Sincerely as the majority of the populace mourned the fate of the Queen, and gravely as the more thoughtful feared for Alexandria’s freedom under Roman rule, all rejoiced over the lenient treatment of the city.  Their lives and property were safe, and the celebration of festivals had become a life habit with all classes.  But the news of the death of Didymus’s wife and the illness of the old man, who could not bear up under the loss of his faithful companion, gave Dion a right to refuse any gay welcome at his home.

Barine’s sorrow was his also, and Didymus died a few days after his wife, with whom he had lived in the bonds of love for more than half a century—­people said, “of a broken heart.”

So Dion and his young wife entered his beautiful palace with no noisy festivities.  Instead of the jubilant hymenaeus, the voice of his own child greeted him on the threshold.

The mourning garments in which Barine welcomed him in the women’s apartment reminded him of the envy of the gods which his friend had feared for him.  But he often fancied that his mother’s statue in the tablinum looked specially happy when the young mistress of the house entered it.

Barine, too, felt that her happiness as wife and mother in her magnificent home would have been overwhelming had not a wise destiny imposed upon her, just at this time, grief for those whom she loved.

Dion instantly devoted himself again to the affairs of the city and his own business.  He and the woman he loved, who had first become really his own during a time of sore privation, had run into the harbour and gazed quietly at the storms of life.  The anchor of love, which moored their ship to the solid earth, had been tested in the solitude of the Serpent Island.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The fisherman and his family had watched the departure of their beloved guests with sorrowful hearts, and the women had shed many tears, although the sons of Pyrrhus had been dismissed from the fleet and were again helping their father at home, as in former times.

Besides, Dion had made the faithful freedman a prosperous man, and given his daughter, Dione, a marriage dowry.  She was soon to become the wife of the captain of the Epicurus, Archibius’s swift galley, whose acquaintance she had made when the vessel, on several occasions, brought Charmian’s Nubian maid to the island.  Anukis’s object in making these visits was not only to see her friend, but to induce him to catch one of the poisonous serpents in the neighbouring island and keep it ready for the Queen.