His artistic faculties were once more roused into play, and found a field for their freest exercise when Antinous told him that he was at his disposal till mid-day, since his master—­or rather Caesar as he was now permitted to name him—­was engaged in business.  The prefect Titianus had come to him with a whole heap of papers, to work with him and his private secretary.  Pollux at once led the favorite into a side room of the little house, with a northern aspect; here on a table lay the wax and the smaller implements which belonged to himself and which he had brought home last evening.  His heart ached, and his nerves were in a painful state of tension as he began his work.  All sorts of anxious thoughts disturbed his spirit, and yet he knew that if he put his whole soul into it he could do something good.  Now, if ever, he must put forth his best powers, and he dreaded failure as an utter catastrophe, for on the face of the whole earth there was no second model to compare with this that stood before him.

But he did not take long to collect himself for the Bithynian’s beauty filled him with profound feeling and it was with a sort of pious exaltation that he grasped the plastic material and moulded it into a form resembling his sitter.  For a whole hour not a word passed between them, but Pollux often sighed deeply and now then a groan of painful anxiety escaped him.

Antinous broke the silence to ask Pollux about Selene.  His heart was full of her, and there was no other man who knew her, and whom he could venture to entrust with his secret.  Indeed it was only to speak to her that he had come to the artist so early.  While Pollux modelled and scraped Antinous told him of all that had happened the previous night.  He lamented having lost the silver quiver when he was upset into the water and regretted that the rose-colored chiton should afterwards have suffered a reduction in length at the hands of his pursuer.  An exclamation of surprise, a word of sympathy, a short pause in the movement of his hand and tool, were all the demonstration on the artist’s part, to which the story of Selene’s adventure and the loss of his master’s costly property gave rise; his whole attention was absorbed in his occupation.  The farther his work progressed the higher rose his admiration for his model.  He felt as if intoxicated with noble wine as he worked to reproduce this incarnation of the ideal of umblemished youthful and manly beauty.  The passion of artistic procreation fired his blood, and threw every thing else—­even the history of Selene’s fall into the sea, and her subsequent rescue—­into the region of commonplace.  Still he had not been inattentive, and what he heard must have had some effect in his mind; for long after Antinous had ended his narrative, he said in a low voice and as if speaking to the bust, which was already assuming definite form: 

“It is a wonderful thing!” and again a little later; “There was always something grand in that unhappy creature.”