"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 what each day brings, because I can not do otherwise. My heart is empty, and if I ever feel anything keenly, it is dread. I have long since ceased to expect any thing good of the future."
"Girl!" exclaimed Pollux. "Why, what has been happening to you? I do not understand half of what you are saying. How came you in the papyrus factory?"
"Do not betray me," begged Selene. "If my father were to hear of it."
"He is asleep, and what you confide to me no one will ever hear of again."