Eric took Roland with them to the museum, and though Bella said nothing, she understood his motive for doing so. On their way thither they met the Russian prince, and Bella ordered the carriage to stop and invited him to accompany them, thinking that thus the party could divide into two groups, the Russian walking sometimes with Roland, and she with Eric; but she could not manage it so; Eric did not once let go of Roland's hand.
They stood long before the group of Niobe and her children, Bella jokingly protesting that the teacher, who seeks to protect the boy from the arrow of the god, was of the Russian type. Eric might explain as often as he would that the head was a modern addition and represented a Scythian, that the teacher was a slave who attended the boy to school or wherever he went, as one of our lackeys might, she still insisted that he was a Russian. As Eric called attention to the fact, that the maiden in the centre of the group clings to her mother Niobe and hides her face in terror, while the boy by the side of his attendant voluntarily turns toward the danger, and with outstretched hand strives to avert it, Roland gazed fixedly upon him, and turned almost as white as the plaster itself; his eye sparkled, and the soft dark hair just beginning to show on lip and chin seemed to tremble. On the way home he drew close to Eric, and trembling as if with cold said:—
"Do you remember when that letter with the great seal came to your parent's house?"
"Certainly—certainly."
"Then you should have been director, and is it not strange, here stand these figures day and night, summer and winter, waiting for us, and keeping still, and looking on while we are dancing and dying."
"What are you talking of?" asked Eric, alarmed by Roland's strange tone and manner.
"Oh, nothing—nothing. I don't know myself what I am saying. I seem to be only hearing the words, and yet am really saying them. I don't know what is the matter with me."
Eric hurried the feverish boy home.