"Tedium!" the girl exclaimed. "By Hector, this Jewish wife of his would open his Ephesian eyes were she to let loose all I suspect in her!" "Brrr! But you are suspicious!" the athlete shivered. The little girl shaped her lips into a kiss and the athlete leaning across the table snatched it from her before she could avoid him. The women caught him by the back of his tunic and pulled him down in his chair. "Sit down!" they whispered. "Don't you see that Juventius is about to speak?" The athlete glanced at the grown man, who had looked down into his plate at the youth's frolic with the child, with the utmost disdain and boredom in his expression. Now that the silence became noticeable, he spoke in an affected voice, but one of the deepest music. "Alas, these Jews!" he said. "How little they know about art! How long has it been since he introduced one of the Temple singers into our lady's hall to show what a piercing high note could be reached by a male voice? And he had the creature sing to prove his contention. I thought I should die! It was worse than awful; it was criminal!" The athlete laughed. "Any singer, then, but Juventius therefore is a malefactor!" he said. "No, it does not follow," Juventius protested in all seriousness, while the child flashed a look of intense amusement at the athlete. "But," waving a pair of long white hands, "none should trifle with music. It is one of the graces of Nature, divine and elemental. Wherefore, anything short of a perfect production becometh a mockery and a mockery against divine things is blasphemy. Ergo, the poor musician is in danger of Hades!" "The monster is safe, safe!" the girl protested. "He does not sing, and from what I caught through the crack of the door, the pretty stranger had better not. My lady, the princess, had a merry time with my lord, the prince, at breakfast this morning, all about this same pretty one. So this is why she breakfasts with us--the second table." Laodice heard this with a sinking heart. This was a strange house in which to live at no definite status, with a future blank and inscrutable. "Is it, then, that you are wary of offending the over-nice exactions of music, that you do not sing?" the athlete demanded of Juventius. "Song," replied the singer gravely, "is originally the expression of the highest exaltation. To sing before the high mark of feeling is reached is an insincerity." "Alas, Juventius," the girl was saying, "how much difficulty you lay up for yourself in determining the limits of art! Teach broadly and the fulfilment of your laws will not be such a task for the overworked and irritable gods of art." "Child!" Juventius cried passionately. "Your ignorance outreaches your presumption!"