“He is not the same to his friends as to us,” said Alexander; but Melissa shook her head, and said sadly:  “He broke out yesterday against Apion, the dealer, and it was dreadful.  For the fiftieth time he had waited supper for you two in vain, and in the twilight, when he had done work, his grief overcame him, and to see him weep is quite heartbreaking!  The Syrian dealer came in and found him all tearful, and being so bold as to jest about it in his flippant way—­”

“The old man would give him his answer, I know!” cried her brother with a hearty laugh.  “He will not again be in a hurry to stir up a wounded lion.”

“That is the very word,” said Melissa, and her large eyes sparkled.  “At the fight in the Circus, I could not help thinking of my father, when the huge king of the desert lay with a broken spear in his loins, whining loudly, and burying his maned head between his great paws.  The gods are pitiless!”

“Indeed they are,” replied the youth, with deep conviction; but his sister looked up at him in surprise.

“Do you say so, Alexander?  Yes, indeed—­you looked just now as I never saw you before.  Has misfortune overtaken you too?”

“Misfortune?” he repeated, and he gently stroked her hair.  “No, not exactly; and you know my woes sit lightly enough on me.  The immortals have indeed shown me very plainly that it is their will sometimes to spoil the feast of life with a right bitter draught.  But, like the moon itself, all it shines on is doomed to change—­happily!  Many things here below seem strangely ordered.  Like ears and eyes, hands and feet, many things are by nature double, and misfortunes, as they say, commonly come in couples yoked like oxen.”

“Then you have had some twofold blow?” asked Melissa, clasping her hands over her anxiously throbbing bosom.

“I, child!  No, indeed.  Nothing has befallen your father’s younger son; and if I were a philosopher, like Philip, I should be moved to wonder why a man can only be wet when the rain falls on him, and yet can be so wretched when disaster falls on another.  But do not look at me with such terror in your great eyes.  I swear to you that, as a man and an artist, I never felt better, and so I ought properly to be in my usual frame of mind.  But the skeleton at life’s festival has been shown to me.  What sort of thing is that?  It is an image—­the image of a dead man which was carried round by the Egyptians, and is to this day by the Romans, to remind the feasters that they should fill every hour with enjoyment, since enjoyment is all too soon at an end.  Such an image, child—­”

“You are thinking of the dead girl—­Seleukus’s daughter—­whose portrait you are painting?” asked Melissa.

Alexander nodded, sat down on the bench by his sister, and, taking up her needlework, exclaimed “Give us some light, child.  I want to see your pretty face.  I want to be sure that Diodorus did not perjure himself when, at the ‘Crane,’ the other day, he swore that it had not its match in Alexandria.  Besides, I hate the darkness.”