Arsinoe leaned far over the parapet of the balcony, shaded her eyes with her hand and was silent for more than a minute.  Then she suddenly cried out loudly and exclaiming: 

“Mother—­it is my mother!” She flew into the room behind her.

“Now she will call her father and destroy all poor Selene’s comfort,” thought Pollux, as he pushed the heavy marble bust on which his gypsum head was fixed, into its right place.

“Well, let him come.  We are the masters here now, and Keraunus dare not touch the Emperor’s property.”  He crossed his arms and stood gazing at the bust, muttering to himself: 

“Patchwork—­miserable patchwork.  We are cobbling up a robe for the Emperor out of mere rags; we are upholsterers and not artists.  If it were only for Hadrian, and not for Diotima and her children, not another finger would I stir in the place.”

The path from the steward’s residence led through some passages and up a few steps to the rotunda, on which the sculptor was standing, but in little more than a minute from Arsinoe’s disappearance from the balcony she was by his side.  With a heightened color she pushed the sculptor away from his work and put herself in the place where he had been standing, to be able to gaze at her leisure at the beloved features.  Then she exclaimed again: 

“It is mother—­mother!” and the bright tears ran over her cheeks, without restraint from the presence of the artist, or the laborers and slaves whom she had flown past on her way, and who stared at her with as much alarm as if she were possessed.

Pollux did not disturb her.  His heart was softened as he watched the tears running down the cheeks of this light-hearted child, and he could not help reflecting that goodness was indeed well rewarded when it could win such tender and enduring love as was cherished for the poor dead mother on the pedestal before him.

After looking for some time at the sculptor’s work Arsinoe grew calmer, and turning to Pollux she asked: 

“Did you make it?”

“Yes,” he replied, looking down.

“And entirely from memory?”

“To be sure.”

“Do you know what?”

“Well.”

“This shows that the Sibyl at the festival of Adonis was right when she sang in the Jalemus that the gods did half the work of the artist.”

“Arsinoe!” cried Pollux, for her words made him feel as if a hot spring were seething in his heart, and he gratefully seized her hand; but she drew it away, for her sister Selene had come out on the balcony and was calling her.

It was for his elder playfellow and not for Arsinoe that Pollux had set his work in this place, but, just now, her gaze fell like a disturbing chill on his excited mood.

“There stands your mother’s portrait,” he called up to the balcony in an explanatory tone, pointing to the bust.

“I see it,” she replied coldly.  “I will look at it presently more closely.  Come up Arsinoe, father wants to speak to you.”