When Melissa returned with the lighted lamp, she found her brother, who was not wont to keep still, sitting in the place where she had left him.  But he sprang up as she entered, and prevented her further greeting by exclaiming: 

“Patience! patience!  You shall be told all.  Only I did not want to worry you on the day of the festival of the dead.  And besides, to-morrow perhaps he will be in a better frame of mind, and next day—­”

Melissa became urgent.  “If Philip is ill—­” she put in.

“Not exactly ill,” said he.  “He has no fever, no ague-fit, no aches and pains.  He is not in bed, and has no bitter draughts to swallow.  Yet is he not well, any more than I, though but just now, in the dining-hall at the Elephant, I ate like a starving wolf, and could at this moment jump over this table.  Shall I prove it?”

“No, no,” said his sister, in growing distress.  “But, if you love me, tell me at once and plainly—­”

“At once and plainly,” sighed the painter.  “That, in any case, will not be easy.  But I will do my best.  You knew Korinna?”

“Seleukus’s daughter?”

“She herself—­the maiden from whose corpse I am painting her portrait.”

“No.  But you wanted—­”

“I wanted to be brief, but I care even more to be understood; and if you have never seen with your own eyes, if you do not yourself know what a miracle of beauty the gods wrought when they molded that maiden, you are indeed justified in regarding me as a fool and Philip as a madman—­which, thank the gods, he certainly is not yet.”

“Then he too has seen the dead maiden?”

“No, no.  And yet—­perhaps.  That at present remains a mystery.  I hardly know what happened even to myself.  I succeeded in controlling myself in my father’s presence; but now, when it all rises up before me, before my very eyes, so distinct, so real, so tangible, now—­by Sirius!  Melissa, if you interrupt me again—­”

“Begin again.  I will be silent,” she cried.  “I can easily picture your Korinna as a divinely beautiful creature.”

Alexander raised his hands to heaven, exclaiming with passionate vehemence:  “Oh, how would I praise and glorify the gods, who formed that marvel of their art, and my mouth should be full of their grace and mercy, if they had but allowed the world to sun itself in the charm of that glorious creature, and to worship their everlasting beauty in her who was their image!  But they have wantonly destroyed their own masterpiece, have crushed the scarce-opened bud, have darkened the star ere it has risen!  If a man had done it, Melissa, a man what would his doom have been!  If he—­”

Here the youth hid his face in his hands in passionate emotion; but, feeling his sister’s arm round his shoulder, he recovered himself, and went on more calmly:  “Well, you heard that she was dead.  She was of just your age; she is dead at eighteen, and her father commissioned me to paint her in death.—­Pour me out some water; then I will proceed as coldly as a man crying the description of a runaway slave.”  He drank a deep draught, and wandered restlessly up and down in front of his sister, while he told her all that had happened to him during the last few days.