Polykarp shook his head.

“If you go often enough to the sacred spot, it will come to you,” said Dorothea.  “The beginning is always the chief difficulty; only begin at once to model your father’s head.”

“I have already begun it,” replied Polykarp, “but I am still tired from last night.”

“You look pale, and have dark lines under your eyes,” said Dorothea anxiously.  “Go up stairs and he down to rest.  I will follow you and bring you a beaker of old wine.”

“That will not hurt him,” said Petrus, thinking as he spoke—­“A draught of Lethe would serve him even better.”

When, an hour later, the senator sought his son in his work-room, he found him sleeping, and the wine stood untouched on the table.  Petrus softly laid his hand on his son’s forehead and found it cool and free from fever.  Then he went quietly up to the portrait of Sirona, raised the cloth with which it was covered, and stood before it a long time sunk in thought.  At last he drew back, covered it up again, and examined the models which stood on a shelf fastened to the wall.

A small female figure particularly fixed his attention, and he was taking it admiringly in his band when Polykarp awoke.

“That is the image of the goddess of fate—­that is a Tyche,” said Petrus.

“Do not be angry with me, father,” entreated Polykarp.  “You know, the figure of a Tyche is to stand in the hand of the statue of the Caesar that is intended for the new city of Constantine, and so I have tried to represent the goddess.  The drapery and pose of the arms, I think, have succeeded, but I failed in the head.”  Petrus, who had listened to him with attention, glanced involuntarily at the head of Sirona, and Polykarp followed his eyes surprised and almost startled.

The father and son had understood each other, and Polykarp said, “I had already thought of that.”

Then he sighed bitterly, and said to himself, “Yes and verily, she is the goddess of my fate.”  But he dared not utter this aloud.

But Petrus had heard him sigh, and said, “Let that pass.  This head smiles with sweet fascination, and the countenance of the goddess that rules the actions even of the immortals, should be stern and grave.”

Polykarp could contain himself no longer.

“Yes, father,” he exclaimed.  “Fate is terrible—­and yet I will represent the goddess with a smiling mouth, for that which is most terrible in her is, that she rules not by stern laws, but smiles while she makes us her sport.”

CHAPTER XV.

It was a splendid morning; not a cloud dimmed the sky which spread high above desert, mountain, and oasis, like an arched tent of uniform deep-blue silk.  How delicious it is to breathe the pure, light, aromatic air on the heights, before the rays of the sun acquire their mid-day power, and the shadows of the heated porphyry cliffs, growing shorter and shorter, at last wholly disappear!