Melissa presently returned, and the youth whose hand she still held was, as might be seen in every feature, none other than the sculptor’s son.  Both were dark-eyed, with noble and splendid heads, and in stature perfectly equal; but while the son’s countenance beamed with hearty enjoyment, and seemed by its peculiar attractiveness to be made—­and to be accustomed—­to charm men and women alike, his father’s face was expressive of disgust and misanthropy.  It seemed, indeed, as though the newcomer had roused his ire, for Heron answered his son’s cheerful greeting with no word but a reproachful “At last!” and paid no heed to the hand the youth held out to him.

Alexander was no doubt inured to such a reception; he did not disturb himself about the old man’s ill-humor, but slapped him on the shoulder with rough geniality, went up to the work-table with easy composure, took up the vice which held the nearly finished gem, and, after holding it to the light and examining it carefully, exclaimed:  “Well done, father!  You have done nothing better than that for a long time.”

“Poor stuff!” said his father.  But his son laughed.

“If you will have it so.  But I will give one of my eyes to see the man in Alexandria who can do the like!”

At this the old man broke out, and shaking his fist he cried:  “Because the man who can find anything worth doing, takes good care not to waste his time here, making divine art a mere mockery by such trifling with toys!  By Sirius!  I should like to fling all those pebbles into the fire, the onyx and shells and jasper and what not, and smash all those wretched tools with these fists, which were certainly made for other work than this.”

The youth laid an arm round his father’s stalwart neck, and gayly interrupted his wrath.  “Oh yes, Father Heron, Philip and I have felt often enough that they know how to hit hard.”

“Not nearly often enough,” growled the artist, and the young man went on: 

“That I grant, though every blow from you was equal to a dozen from the hand of any other father in Alexandria.  But that those mighty fists on human arms should have evoked the bewitching smile on the sweet lips of this Psyche, if it is not a miracle of art, is—­”

“The degradation of art,” the old man put in; but Alexander hastily added: 

“The victory of the exquisite over the coarse.”

“A victory!” exclaimed Heron, with a scornful flourish of his hand.  “I know, boy, why you are trying to garland the oppressive yoke with flowers of flattery.  So long as your surly old father sits over the vice, he only whistles a song and spares you his complaints.  And then, there is the money his work brings in!”

He laughed bitterly, and as Melissa looked anxiously up at him, her brother exclaimed: