“The picture is so successful that I finished that for Seleukus in all confidence, and for the sarcophagus I will copy it as well or as ill as time will allow.  It will hardly be seen in the half-dark tomb, and how few will ever go to see it!  None but a Seleukus can afford to employ so costly a brush as your brother’s is—­thank the Muses!  But the second portrait is quite another thing, for that may chance to be hung next a picture by Apelles; and it must restore to the parents so much of their lost child as it lies in my power to give them.  So, on my way, I made up my mind to begin the copy at once by lamp-light, for it must be ready by to-morrow night at latest.

“I hurried to my work-room, and my slave placed the picture on an easel, while I welcomed my brother Philip who had come to see me, and who had lighted a lamp, and of course had brought a book.  He was so absorbed in it that he did not observe that I had come in till I addressed him.  Then I told him whence I came and what had happened, and he thought it all very strange and interesting.

“He was as usual rather hurried and hesitating, not quite clear, but understanding it all.  Then he began telling me something about a philosopher who has just come to the front, a porter by trade, from whom he had heard sundry wonders, and it was not till Syrus brought me in a supper of oysters—­for I could still eat nothing more solid—­that he asked to see the portrait.

“I pointed to the easel, and watched him; for the harder he is to please, the more I value his opinion.  This time I felt confident of praise, or even of some admiration, if only for the beauty of the model.

“He threw off the veil from the picture with a hasty movement, but, instead of gazing at it calmly, as he is wont, and snapping out his sharp criticisms, he staggered backward, as though the noonday sun had dazzled his sight.  Then, bending forward, he stared at the painting, panting as he might after racing for a wager.  He stood in perfect silence, for I know not how long, as though it were Medusa he was gazing on, and when at last he clasped his hand to his brow, I called him by name.  He made no reply, but an impatient ‘Leave me alone!’ and then he still gazed at the face as though to devour it with his eyes, and without a sound.

“I did not disturb him; for, thought I, he too is bewitched by the exquisite beauty of those virgin features.  So we were both silent, till he asked, in a choked voice:  ’And did you paint that?  Is that, do you say, the daughter that Seleukus has just lost?’

“Of course I said ‘Yes’; but then he turned on me in a rage, and reproached me bitterly for deceiving and cheating him, and jesting with things that to him were sacred, though I might think them a subject for sport.

“I assured him that my answer was as earnest as it was accurate, and that every word of my story was true.

“This only made him more furious.  I, too, began to get angry, and as he, evidently deeply agitated, still persisted in saying that my picture could not have been painted from the dead Korinna, I swore to him solemnly, with the most sacred oath I could think of, that it was really so.