“A Galatea—­a Galatea without an equal!” thought he, as he stood with his eyes fixed on Arsinoe’s face and figure.  “Just as if she had this instant risen from the sea—­that form is just as fresh, and joyous, and healthy; and her little curls wave back from her brow as if they were still floating on the water; and now as she stoops, how full and supple in every movement.  It is like a daughter of Nereus following the line of the as the waves as they rise into crests and dip again into watery valleys.  She is like Selene and her mother in the shape of her head and the Greek cut of her face, but the elder sister is like the statue of Prometheus before it had a soul, and Arsinoe is like the Master’s work after the celestial fire coursed through her veins.”

The artist had felt and thought all this out in a few seconds, but the girl found her speechless admirer’s silence too long, and exclaimed impatiently: 

“You have not yet offered me any proper greeting.  What are you doing down there?”

“Look here,” he replied, lifting the cloth from the portrait, which was a striking likeness.

Arsinoe leaned far over the parapet of the balcony, shaded her eyes with her hand and was silent for more than a minute.  Then she suddenly cried out loudly and exclaiming: 

“Mother—­it is my mother!” She flew into the room behind her.

“Now she will call her father and destroy all poor Selene’s comfort,” thought Pollux, as he pushed the heavy marble bust on which his gypsum head was fixed, into its right place.

“Well, let him come.  We are the masters here now, and Keraunus dare not touch the Emperor’s property.”  He crossed his arms and stood gazing at the bust, muttering to himself: 

“Patchwork—­miserable patchwork.  We are cobbling up a robe for the Emperor out of mere rags; we are upholsterers and not artists.  If it were only for Hadrian, and not for Diotima and her children, not another finger would I stir in the place.”

The path from the steward’s residence led through some passages and up a few steps to the rotunda, on which the sculptor was standing, but in little more than a minute from Arsinoe’s disappearance from the balcony she was by his side.  With a heightened color she pushed the sculptor away from his work and put herself in the place where he had been standing, to be able to gaze at her leisure at the beloved features.  Then she exclaimed again: 

“It is mother—­mother!” and the bright tears ran over her cheeks, without restraint from the presence of the artist, or the laborers and slaves whom she had flown past on her way, and who stared at her with as much alarm as if she were possessed.

Pollux did not disturb her.  His heart was softened as he watched the tears running down the cheeks of this light-hearted child, and he could not help reflecting that goodness was indeed well rewarded when it could win such tender and enduring love as was cherished for the poor dead mother on the pedestal before him.