"Like a mother!" repeated Selene, and she smiled a bitter negative.

"Of course a mother's love is a thing by itself, but your father and the
little ones have every reason to be satisfied with yours."

"The little ones are perhaps, and Helios who is blind, but Arsinoe does
what she can."

"You certainly are not content, I can hear it in your voice, and you used
formerly to be as merry and happy as your sister, though perhaps not so
saucy."

"Formerly--"

"How sadly that sounds! And yet you are handsome, you are young, and
life lies before you."

"But what a life!"

"Well, what?" asked the sculptor, and taking his hands from his work he
looked ardently at the fair pale girl before him and cried out fervently:

"A life which might be full of happiness and satisfied affection."

The girl shook her head in negation and answered coldly:

"'Love is joy,' says the Christian woman who superintends us at work in
the papyrus factory, and since my mother died I have had no love. I
enjoyed all my share of happiness once for all in my childhood, now I am
content if only we are spared the worst misfortunes. Otherwise I take