With the same almost morbid intensity, she had afterwards applied herself to sculpture, and had come to Athens in order to study the best works, the masterpieces of Phidias, Scopas, and Praxiteles.
"You are still discussing grammar?" asked the daughter of Helvidius Priscus of the guests, as she came into the dining-hall. She continued ironically: "Don't trouble yourselves; go on. I won't argue or complain, because I'm too hungry after my day's work. Slave, some wine!..."
"My friends," continued Arsinoë when seated, "you'll ruin your minds with quotations from Demosthenes and your rules from Quintilian!... Take care! Rhetoric will ruin you.... I want to see a man who doesn't care a fig for Homer or for Cicero, who speaks without thinking of the aspirates, of syntax, or of the conjunction of letters. Julian, let us go down to the beach after supper; I am disinclined for discussions on dactyls and anapæsts."
"Precisely my own mood, Arsinoë," stammered Garguillus, who had eaten too much _foie gras_ and who almost always, at the end of dinner, felt an aversion for literature proportionate to the weight upon his stomach.
"_Litterarum intemperantia laboramus_," as Seneca used to say. "We are suffering from literary indigestion. We are simply poisoning ourselves!" and he thoughtfully took a tooth-pick from a pocket. His large face expressed weariness and disgust.
Together the pair went down the alley of cypresses leading to the sea. The moon-path of sensitive silver on the waters ran up to the horizon, and waves were breaking against a chalk cliff. At the end of the alley there was a semicircular seat. Above it the huntress Artemis, in short tunic, with crescented hair, quiver on shoulder, and two deer-hounds at her feet, looked down on the two young people.
They sat down together. Arsinoë pointed out the hill of the Acropolis, so distant that the columns of the Parthenon could hardly be distinguished; and took up the thread of conversations started at their former meetings--
"See how beautiful it is!... And you would destroy that, Julian?"
Making no reply, he stared on the ground.
"I have thought much over what you said to me the last time we met, concerning this humility of yours," continued Arsinoë gently. "Was Alexander son of Philip of Macedon humble? And nevertheless is he not great and splendid?"