“Suddenly it flashed upon me that I was alone with Korinna, and the feeling grew stronger and stronger; I fancied her lovely lips had moved, that a smile gently parted them, inviting me to kiss them.  As often as I looked at them—­and they bewitched me—­I saw and felt the same, and at last every impulse within me drove me toward her, and I could no longer resist:  my lips pressed hers in a kiss!”

Melissa softly sighed, but the artist did not hear; he went on:  “And in that kiss I became hers; she took the heart and soul of me.  I can no longer escape from her; awake or asleep, her image is before my eyes, and my spirit is in her power.”

Again he drank, emptying the cup at one deep gulp.  Then he went on:  “So be it!  Who sees a god, they say, must die.  And it is well, for he has known something more glorious than other men.  Our brother Philip, too, lives with his heart in bonds to that one alone, unless a demon has cheated his senses.  I am troubled about him, and you must help me.”

He sprang up, pacing the room again with long strides, but his sister clung to his arm and besought him to shake off the bewitching vision.  How earnest was her prayer, what eager tenderness rang in her every word, as she entreated him to tell her when and where her elder brother, too, had met the daughter of Seleukus!

The artist’s soft heart was easily moved.  Stroking the hair of the loving creature at his side—­so helpful as a rule, but now bewildered —­he tried to calm her by affecting a lighter mood than he really felt, assuring her that he should soon recover his usual good spirits.  She knew full well, he said, that his living loves changed in frequent succession, and it would be strange indeed if a dead one could bind him any longer.  And his adventure, so far as it concerned the house of Seleukus, ended with that kiss; for the lady Berenike had presently waked, and urged him to finish the portrait at his own house.

Next morning he had completed it with the help of the Galatea in the villa at Kanopus, and he had heard a great deal about the dead maiden.  A young woman who was left in charge of the villa had supplied him with whatever he needed.  Her pretty face was swollen with weeping, and it was in a voice choked with tears that she had told him that her husband, who was a centurion in Caesar’s pretorian guard, would arrive to-morrow or next day at Alexandria, with his imperial master.  She had not seen him for a long time, and had an infant to show him which he had not yet seen; and yet she could not be glad, for her young mistress’s death had extinguished all her joy.

“The affection which breathed in every word of the centurion’s wife,” Alexander said, “helped me in my work.  I could be satisfied with the result.