up and sent me to the right about—­by Castor and Pollux! packed me off with my tail between my legs!  My only comfort was that Constantine had just quitted the pretty little hussy.  By the side of the god of war, thought I, a country Pan makes but a poor figure; but this Ares was dismissed by Venus, and so, if only to keep up my self-respect, I was forced to conclude that the girl, with all her pertness, was of a better sort than we had supposed.  My presents, which would have tempted any other girl in Alexandria to follow a cripple to Hades, she took as an insult; she positively cried with indignation, and I really respect pretty little Dada!”

“She is my very own sister’s child,” Herse threw in, honestly angered by the cheap estimation in which every one seemed to hold her adopted child.  “My own sister’s,” she insisted, with an emphasis which seemed to imply that she had a whole family of half-sisters.  “Though we now earn our bread as singers, we have seen better days; and in these hard times Croesus to-day may be Irus to-morrow.  As for us, Karnis did not dissipate his money in riotous living.  It was foolish perhaps but it was splendid—­I believe we should do the same again; he spent all his inheritance in trying to reinstate Art.  However, what is the use of looking after money when it is gone!  If you can win it, or keep it you will be held of some account, but if you are poor the dogs will snap at you!—­The girl, Dada—­we have taken as much care of her as if she were our own, and divided our last mouthful with her before now.  Karnis used to tease her about training her voice—­and now, when she could really do something to satisfy even good judges—­now, when she might have helped us to earn a living-now. . .”

The good woman broke down and burst into tears, while Karnis tried to soothe and comfort her.

“We shall get on without them somehow,” he said. “‘Nil desperandum’ says Horace the Roman.  And after all they are not lizards that can hide in the cracks of the walls; I know every corner of Alexandria and I will go and hunt them up at once.”

“And I will help you, my friend,” said Demetrius, “We will go to the Hippodrome—­the gentry you will meet with there are capital blood-hounds after such game as the daughter of your ‘own sister,’ my good woman.  As to the black-haired Christian girl—­I have seen her many a time on board ship. . .”

“Oh! she will take refuge with some fellow-Christians,” remarked Porphyrius.  “Olympius told me all about her.  I know plenty of the same sort in the Church.  They fling away life and happiness as if they were apple-peelings to snatch at something which they believe to constitute salvation.  It is folly, madness! pure unmitigated madness!  To have sung in the temple of the she-devil Isis with Gorgo and the other worshippers would have cost her her seat in Paradise.  That, as I believe, is the cause of her flight.”