“Behind your father’s back?”

“Yes, he would rather that we should starve than allow it.  Every day I feel the same loathing for the deceit; but we could not get on without it, for Arsinoe thinks of nothing but herself, plays draughts with my father, curls his hair, plays with the children as if they were dolls, but it is my part to take care of them.”

“And you, you say, have no share of love.  Happily no one believes you, and I least of all.  Only lately my mother was telling me about you, and I thought you were a girl who might turn out just such a wife as a woman ought to be.”

“And now?”

“Now, I know it for certain.”

“You may be mistaken.”

“No, no! your name is Selene, and you are as gentle as the kindly moonlight; names, even, have their significance.”

“And my blind brother who has never even seen the light is called Helios!” answered the girl.

Pollux had spoken with much warmth, but Selene’s last words startled him and checked the effervescence of his feelings.  Finding he did not answer her bitter exclamation, she said, at first coolly, but with increasing warmth: 

“You are beginning to believe me, and you are right, for what I do for the children is not done out of love, or out of kindness, or because I set their welfare above my own.  I have inherited my father’s pride, and it would be odious to me if my brothers and sisters went about in rags, and people thought we were as poor and helpless as we really are.  What is most horrible to me is sickness in the house, for that increases the anxiety I always feel and swallows up my last coin; the children must not perish for want of it.  I do not want to make myself out worse than I am; it grieves me too to see them drooping.  But nothing that I do brings me happiness—­at most it moderates my fears.  You ask what I am afraid of?—­of everything, everything that can happen to me, for I have no reason to look forward to anything good.  When there is a knock, it may be a creditor; when people look at Arsinoe in the street, I seem to see dishonor lurking round her; when my father acts against the advice of the physician I feel as if we were standing already roofless in the open street.  What is there that I can do with a happy mind?  I certainly am not idle, still I envy the woman who can sit with her hands in her lap and be waited on by slaves, and if a golden treasure fell into my possession, I would never stir a finger again, and would sleep every day till the sun was high and make slaves look after my father and the children.  My life is sheer misery.  If ever we see better days I shall be astonished, and before I have got over my astonishment it will all be over.”