He began, and, as she gazed at him, it struck her how little he resembled his father and brother, though he was no less tall, and his head was shaped like theirs.  But his frame, instead of showing their stalwart build, was lean and weakly.  His spine did not seem strong enough for his long body, and he never held himself upright.  His head was always bent forward, as if he were watching or seeking something; and even when he had seated himself in his father’s place at the work-table to tell his tale, his hands and feet, even the muscles of his well-formed but colorless face, were in constant movement.  He would jump up, or throw back his head to shake his long hair off his face, and his fine, large, dark eyes glowed with wrathful fires.

“I received my first repulse from the prefect,” he began, and as he spoke, his arms, on whose graceful use the Greeks so strongly insisted, flew up in the air as though by their own impulse rather than by the speaker’s will.

“Titianus affects the philosopher, because when he was young—­long ago, that is very certain—­his feet trod the Stoa.”

“Your master, Xanthos, said that he was a very sound philosopher,” Melissa put in.

“Such praise is to be had cheap,” said Philip, by the most influential man in the town.  But his methods are old-fashioned.  He crawls after Zeno; he submits to authority, and requires more independent spirits to do the same.  To him the divinity is the Great First Cause.  In this world of ours he can discern the working of a purposeful will, and confuses his mind with windy, worn-out ideals.  Virtue, he says—­but to what end repeat such stale old stuff?”

“We have no time for it,” said Melissa, who saw that Philip was on the point of losing himself in a philosophical dissertation, for he had begun to enjoy the sound of his own voice, which was, in fact, unusually musical.

“Why not?” he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, and with a bitter smile.  “When he has shot away all his arrows, the bowman may rest; and, as you will soon hear, our quiver is empty—­as empty as this cup which I have drained.”

“No, no!” exclaimed Melissa, eagerly.  “If this first attempt has failed, that is the very reason for planning another.  I, too, can use figures of speech.  The archer who is really eager to hit the object on which he has spent his arrows, does not retire from the fight, but fetches more; and if he can find none, he fights with his bow, or falls on the enemy with stones, fists, and teeth.”

Philip looked at her in astonishment, and exclaimed in pleased surprise, without any of the supercilious scorn which he commonly infused into his tone when addressing his humble sister: