The steward’s new ‘body-servant,’ the old black woman, Mastor, the tailor and his slave, helped Arsinoe to carry her father’s lifeless body and lay it on a couch, and the slave closed his eyes.  He was dead—­so each told the despairing girl, but she would not, could not believe it.  As soon as she was alone with the old negress and the dead, she lifted up his heavy, clumsy arm, and as soon as she let go her hold it fell by his side like lead.  She lifted the cloth from the dead man’s face, but she flung it over him again at once, for death had drawn his features.  Then she kissed his cold hand and brought the children in and made them do the same, and said sobbing: 

“We have no father now; we shall never, never see him again.”

The little blind boy felt the dead body with his hands, and asked his sister: 

“Will he not wake again to-morrow morning and make you curl his hair, and take me up on his knee?”

“Never, never; he is gone, gone for ever.”

As she spoke Mastor entered the room, sent by his master.  Yesterday had he not heard from the overseer of the pavement-workers the comforting tidings that after our grief and suffering here on earth there would be another, beautiful, blissful and eternal life?  He went kindly up to Arsinoe and said: 

“No, no, my children; when we are dead we become beautiful angels with colored wings, and all who have loved each other here on earth will meet again in the presence of the good God.”

Arsinoe looked at the slave with disapproval.

“What is the use,” she asked, “of cheating the children with silly tales?  Their father is gone, quite gone, but we will never, never forget him.”

“Are there any angels with red wings?” asked the youngest little girl.

“Oh!  I want to be an angel!” cried Helios, clapping his hands.  “And can the angels see?”

“Yes, dear little man,” replied Mastor, “and their eyes are wonderfully bright, and all they look upon is beautiful.”

“Tell them no more Christian nonsense,” begged Arsinoe.  “Ah! children, when we shall have burned our father’s body there will be nothing left of him but a few grey ashes.”

But the slave took the little blind boy on his knees and whispered to him: 

“Only believe what I tell you—­you will see him again in Heaven.”

Then he set him down again, gave Arsinoe a little bag of gold pieces in Caesar’s name, and begged her—­for so his master desired—­to find a new abode and, after the deceased was burned on the morrow, to quit Lochias with the children.  When Mastor was gone Arsinoe opened the chest, in which lay her father’s papyri and the money that Plutarch had paid for the ivory cup, put in the heavy purse sent by the Emperor, comforting herself while her tears flowed, with the reflection that she and the children were provided at any rate against immediate want.

But where was she to go with the little ones?  Where could she hope to find a refuge at once?  What was to become of them when all they now possessed was spent.  The gods be thanked! she was not forlorn; she still had friends.  She could find protection and love with Pollux and look to dame Doris for motherly counsel.