Arsinoe went home comforted.  Selene’s sufferings were certainly less than she had pictured them; she did not wish to be nursed by any one besides dame Hannah.  She might perhaps have a little fever, but any one who was capable of discussing every little question of house-keeping, and all that related to the children could not be—­as Arsinoe thought while she walked back through the garden, leaning on the artist’s arm—­really and properly ill.

“It must revive and delight her to have Roxana for a sister!” cried Pollux; but his pretty companion shook her head and said:  “She is always so odd; what most delights me is averse to her.”

“Well Selene is of course the moon, and you are the sun.”

“And what are you?” asked Arsinoe.

“I am tall Pollux, and to-night I feel as if I might some day be great Pollux.”

“If you succeed I shall grow with you.”

“That will be your right, since it is only through you that I can ever succeed in that which I propose to do.

“And how should a simple little thing, such as I am, be able to help an artist?”

“By living, and by loving him,” cried the sculptor, lifting her up in his arms before she could prevent him.

Outside the garden-gate the old slave-woman was sitting asleep.  She had learnt from the porter that her young mistress had been admitted with her companion, but she herself had been forbidden to enter the grounds.  A curbstone had served her for a seat, and as she waited her eyes had closed, in spite of the increasing noise in the street.  Arsinoe did not waken her, but asked Pollux, with a roguish laugh: 

“We shall find our way alone, shall we not?”

“If Eros does not lead us astray,” answered the artist.  And so, as they went on their way, they jested and exchanged little tender speeches.

The nearer they got to Lochias and to the main lines of traffic which intersected at right angles the Canopic way—­the widest and longest road in the city—­the fuller was the stream of people that flowed onwards in the direction in which they were going; but this circumstance favored them, for those who wish to be unobserved, when they cannot be absolutely alone, have only to mix with the crowd.  As they were borne towards the focus and centre of the festive doings, they clung closely together, she to him, and he to her, so that they might not be torn apart by any of the rushing and tumultuous processions of excited Thracian women who, faithful to their native usages, came storming by with a young bull, on this particular night of the year, that following the shortest day.  They had hardly gone a hundred paces beyond the Moon-street when they heard proceeding from it a wild roving song of tipsy jollity, and loud above it the sound of drums and pipes, cymbals and noisy shouting, and at the same time in the King’s street, a road which crossed the Bruchiom and opened on Lochias, a merry troup came towards them.