Hastily forming his resolution, he again turned to his friend, saying: 

“You have shown yourself a father to me.  Imagine that I am indeed your son, and, as such wished to confess that a woman had become dear to my heart, and to ask whether you would be glad to greet her as a daughter.”

Here Archibius interrupted him with the exclamation:  “A ray of light amid all this gloom?  Grasp what you have too long neglected as soon as possible!  It befits a good citizen to marry.  The Greek does not attain full manhood till he becomes husband and father.  If I have remained unwedded, there was a special reason for it, and how often I have envied the cobbler whom I saw standing before his shop in the evening, holding his child in his arms, or the pilot, to whom large and small hands were stretched in greeting when he returned home!  When I enter my dwelling only my dogs rejoice.  But you, whose beautiful palace stands empty, to whose proud family it is due that you should provide for its continuance—­”

“That is just what brings me into a state of indecision, which is usually foreign to my nature,” interrupted Dion.  “You know me and my position in the world, and you have also known from her earliest childhood the woman to whom I allude.”

“Iras?” asked his companion, hesitatingly.  His sister, Charmian, had told him of the love felt by the Queen’s younger waiting-woman.

But Dion eagerly denied this, adding I am speaking of Barine, the daughter of your dead friend Leonax.  “I love her, yet my pride is sensitive, and I know that it will extend to my future wife.  The contemptuous glances which others might cast at her I should scorn, for I know her worth.  Surely you remember my mother:  she was a very different woman.  Her house, her child, the slaves, her loom, were everything to her.  She rigidly exacted from other women the chaste reserve which was a marked trait in her own character.  Yet she was gentle, and loved me, her only son, beyond aught else.  I think she would have opened her arms to Barine, had she believed that she was necessary to my happiness.  But would the young beauty, accustomed to gay intercourse with distinguished men, have been able to submit to her demands?  When I consider that she cannot help taking into her married life the habit of being surrounded and courted; when I think that the imprudence of a woman accustomed to perfect freedom might set idle tongues in motion, and cast a shadow upon the radiant purity of my name; when I even—­” and he raised his clenched right hand.  But Archibius answered soothingly: 

“That anxiety is groundless if Barine warmly and joyfully gives you her whole heart.  It is a sunny, lovable, true woman’s heart, and therefore capable of a great love.  If she bestows it on you—­and I believe she will—­go and offer sacrifices in your gratitude; for the immortals desired your happiness when they guided your choice to her and not to Iras, my own sister’s child.  If you were really my son, I would now exclaim, ’You could not bring me a dearer daughter, if—­I repeat it—­if you are sure of her love.’”