Pollux touched Arsinoe and whispered to her: 

“Your sister lies there in her sleep like an Ariadne deserted by Dionysus.  How wretched she will feel when she comes to herself.”

“She looks to me less pale than usual.”

“Look now, how she bends her arm, and what a lovely attitude as she puts her hand to her head!”

“Go—­” said Arsinoe.  “You ought not to be spying here.”

“Directly, directly—­but if you were lying there no power should stir me from the spot.  How carefully Hannah lifts the wet wrapper from her poor broken ankle.  You could not touch your eye more gently than the good woman handles Selene’s foot.”

“Go back, she is looking straight this way.”

“What a wonderful face!  It would do for a Penelope, but there is something singular in her eyes.  Now if I had to make another star-gazing Urania, or a Sappho full of the deity, and with eyes fixed on the heavens in poetic rapture, that is what I would put into her!  She is no longer young, but how pure her face is!  It is like a sky when the wind has swept it clear of clouds.”

“Seriously you must go now,” said Arsinoe drawing away her hand, which he had again taken.  Pollux saw that his praise of another woman’s beauty annoyed her, and he said soothingly: 

“Be easy child.  You have not your match here in Alexandria, no, nor so far as Greek is spoken.  A perfectly clear sky is certainly not the most beautiful to my taste.  Pure light, and pure blue, give no satisfaction to the artist, it is only behind a few moving clouds, lighted up by changing gleams of gold and silver, that the firmament has any true charm, and though your face too is like heaven to me it does not lack sweet movement, never twice alike.  Now this matron—­”

“Only look,” interrupted Arsinoe, “how tenderly dame Hannah bends over Selene, and now she is gently kissing her brow.  No mother could tend her own daughter more lovingly.  I have known her for a long time; she is good, very good; it is hardly credible for she is a Christian.”

“The cross up there over the door,” said Pollux “is the token by which these extraordinary people recognize each other.”

“And what is signified by the dove and fish and anchor round it?” asked Arsinoe.

“They are emblems of the mysteries of the Christians,” replied Pollux.  “I do not understand them; the things are wretchedly painted; the adherents of the crucified God contemn all art, and particularly my branch of it, for they hate all images of the gods.”

“And yet among such blasphemers we find such good men; I will go in at once; Hannah is wetting another handkerchief.”

“And how unwearied and kind she looks as she does it; still there is something strange, deserted, and graceless in this large bare room.  I should not like to live there.”

“Have you noticed the faint scent of lavender that comes through the window?”