figure which he could fancy to be Klea.  Many a man, who in his own
particular sphere of life can cut a very respectable figure, becomes a
laughing-stock for children when he is taken out of his own narrow
circle, and thrown into the turmoil of the world with all his
peculiarities clinging to him.  So it was with Serapion; in the suburbs
the street-boys ran after him mocking at him, but it was not till three
smart hussys, who were resting from their dance in front of a tavern,
laughed loudly as they caught sight of him, and an insolent soldier drove
the point of his lance through his flowing mane, as if by accident, that
he became fully conscious of his wild appearance, and it struck him
forcibly that he could never in this guise find admission to the king's
palace.

With prompt determination he turned into the first barber's stall that he
saw lighted up; at his appearance the barber hastily retreated behind his
counter, but he got his hair and beard cut, and then, for the first time
for many years, he saw his own face in the mirror that the barber held
before him.  He nodded, with a melancholy smile, at the face--so much
aged--that looked at him from the bright surface, paid what was asked,
and did not heed the compassionate glance which the barber and his
assistant sent after him.  They both thought they had been exercising
their skill on a lunatic, for he had made no answer to all their
questions, and had said nothing but once in a deep and fearfully loud
voice:

"Chatter to other people--I am in a hurry."

In truth his spirit was in no mood for idle gossip; no, it was full of
gnawing anxiety and tender fears, and his heart bled when he reflected
that he had broken his vows, and forsworn the oath he had made to his
dying mother.

When he reached the palace-gate he begged one of the civic guard to
conduct him to his brother, and as he backed his request with a gift of
money he was led at once to the man whom he sought.  Glaucus was
excessively startled to recognize Serapion, but he was so much engaged
that he could only give up a few minutes to his brother, whose
proceedings he considered as both inexplicable and criminal.

Irene, as the anchorite now learned, had been carried off from the
temple, not by Euergetes but by the Roman, and Klea had quitted the
palace only a few minutes since in a chariot and would return about
midnight and on foot from the second tavern to the temple.  And the poor
child was so utterly alone, and her way lay through the desert where she
might be attacked by dissolute soldiery or tomb-robbers or jackals and
hyenas.  Her walk was to begin from the second tavern, and that was the
very spot where low rioters were wont to assemble--and his darling was so
young, so fair, and so defenceless!

He was once more a prey to the same unendurable dread that had come over
him, in his cell, after Klea had left the temple and darkness had closed
in.  At that moment he had felt all that a father could feel who from his
prison-window sees his beloved and defenceless child snatched away by
some beast of prey.  All the perils that could threaten her in the palace
or in the city, swarming with drunken soldiers, had risen before his mind
with fearful vividness, and his powerful imagination had painted in
glaring colors all the dangers to which his favorite--the daughter of a
noble and respected man--might be exposed.

He rushed up and down his cell like a wounded tiger, he flung himself
against the walls, and then, with his body hanging far out of the window,
had looked out to see if the girl--who could not possibly have returned
yet--were not come back again.  The darker it grew, the more his anguish
rose, and the more hideous were the pictures that stood before his fancy;
and when, presently, a pilgrim in the Pastophorium who had fallen into
convulsions screamed out loud, he was no longer master of himself--he
kicked open the door which, locked on the outside and rotten from age,
had been closed for years, hastily concealed about him some silver coins
he kept in his chest, and let himself down to the ground.

There he stood, between his cell and the outer wall of the temple, and
now it was that he remembered his vows, and the oath he had sworn, and
his former flight from his retreat.  Then he had fled because the
pleasures and joys of life had tempted him forth--then he had sinned
indeed; but now the love, the anxious care that urged him to quit his
prison were the same as had brought him back to it.  It was to keep faith
that he now broke faith, and mighty Serapis could read his heart, and his
mother was dead, and while she lived she had always been ready and
willing to forgive.

He fancied so vividly that he could see her kind old face looking at him
that he nodded at her as if indeed she stood before him.

Then, he rolled an empty barrel to the foot of the wall, and with some
difficulty mounted on it.  The sweat poured down him as he climbed up the
wall built of loose unbaked bricks to the parapet, which was much more
than a man's height; then, sliding and tumbling, he found himself in the
ditch which ran round it on the outside, scrambled up its outer slope,
and set out at last on his walk to Memphis.

What he had afterwards learned in the palace concerning Klea had but
little relieved his anxiety on her account; she must have reached the
border of the desert so much sooner than he, and quick walking was so
difficult to him, and hurt the soles of his feet so cruelly!  Perhaps he
might be able to procure a staff, but there was just as much bustle
outside the gate of the citadel as by day.  He looked round him, feeling
the while in his wallet, which was well filled with silver, and his eye
fell on a row of asses whose drivers were crowding round the soldiers and
servants that streamed out of the great gate.

He sought out the strongest of the beasts with an experienced eye, flung
a piece of silver to the owner, mounted the ass, which panted under its
load, and promised the driver two drachmm in addition if he would take
him as quickly as possible to the second tavern on the road to the
Serapeum.  Thus--he belaboring the sides of the unhappy donkey with his
sturdy bare legs, while the driver, running after him snorting and
shouting, from time to time poked him up from behind with a stick--
Serapion, now going at a short trot, and now at a brisk gallop, reached
his destination only half an hour later than Klea.

In the tavern all was dark and empty, but the recluse desired no
refreshment.  Only his wish that he had a staff revived in his mind, and
he soon contrived to possess himself of one, by pulling a stake out of
the fence that surrounded the innkeeper's little garden.  This was a
somewhat heavy walking-stick, but it eased the recluse's steps, for
though his hot and aching feet carried him but painfully the strength of
his arms was considerable.

The quick ride had diverted his mind, had even amused him, for he was
easily pleased, and had recalled to him his youthful travels; but now, as
he walked on alone in the desert, his thoughts reverted to Klea, and to
her only.

He looked round for her keenly and eagerly as soon as the moon came out
from behind the clouds, called her name from time to time, and thus got
as far as the avenue of sphinxes which connected the Greek and Egyptian
temples; a thumping noise fell upon his ear from the cave of the Apis-
tombs.  Perhaps they were at work in there, preparing for the approaching
festival.  But why were the soldiers, which were always on guard here,
absent from their posts to-night?  Could it be that they had observed
Klea, and carried her off?

On the farther side of the rows of sphinxes too, which he had now
reached, there was not a man to be seen--not a watchman even though the
white limestone of the tombstones and the yellow desert-sand shone as
clear in the moonlight as if they had some internal light of their own.

At every instant he grew more and more uneasy, he climbed to the top of a
sand-hill to obtain a wider view, and loudly called Klea's name.

There--was he deceived?  No--there was a figure visible near one of the
ancient tomb-shrines--a form that seemed wrapped in a long robe, and when
once more he raised his voice in a loud call it came nearer to him and to
the row of sphinxes.  In greate haste and as fast as he could he got down
again to the roadway, hurried across the smooth pavement, on both sides
of which the long perspective of man-headed lions kept guard, and
painfully clambered up a sand-heap on the opposite side.  This was in
truth a painful effort, for the sand crumbled away again and again under
his feet, slipping down hill and carrying him with it, thus compelling
him to find a new hold with hand and foot.  At last he was standing on
the outer border of the sphinx-avenue and opposite the very shrine where
he fancied he had seen her whom he sought; but during his clamber it had
become perfectly dark again, for a heavy cloud had once more veiled the
moon.  He put both hands to his mouth, and shouted as loud as he could,
"Klea!"--and then again, "Klea!"

Then, close at his feet he heard a rustle in the sand, and saw a figure
moving before him as though it had risen out of the ground.  This could
not be Klea, it was a man--still, perhaps, he might have seen his
darling--but before he had time to address him he felt the shock of a
heavy blow that fell with tremendous force on his back between his
shoulders.  The assassin's sand-bag had missed the exact spot on the nape
of the neck, and Serapion's strongly-knit backbone would have been able
to resist even a stronger blow.

The conviction that he was attacked by robbers flashed on his
consciousness as immediately as the sense of pain, and with it the
certainty that he was a lost man if he did not defend himself stoutly.

Behind him he heard another rustle in the sand.  As quickly as he could
he turned round with an exclamation of "Accursed brood of vipers!" and
with his heavy staff he fell upon the figure before him like a smith
beating cold iron, for his eye, now more accustomed to the darkness,
plainly saw it to be a man.  Serapion must have hit straight, for his foe
fell at his feet with a hideous roar, rolled over and over in the sand,
groaning and panting, and then with one shrill shriek lay silent and
motionless.

The recluse, in spite of the dim light, could see all the movements of
the robber he had punished so severely, and he was bending over the
fallen man anxiously and compassionately when he shuddered to feel two
clammy hands touching his feet, and immediately after two sharp pricks in
his right heel, which were so acutely painful that he screamed aloud, and
was obliged to lift up the wounded foot.  At the same time, however, he
did not overlook the need to defend himself.  Roaring like a wounded
bull, cursing and raging, he laid about him on all sides with his staff,
but hit nothing but the ground.  Then as his blows followed each other
more slowly, and at last his wearied arms could no longer wield the heavy
stake, and he found himself compelled to sink on his knees, a hoarse
voice addressed him thus:

"You have taken my comrade's life, Roman, and a two-legged serpent has
stung you for it.  In a quarter of an hour it will be all over with you,
as it is with that fellow there.  Why does a fine gentleman like you go
to keep an appointment in the desert without boots or sandals, and so
make our work so easy?  King Euergetes and your friend Eulaeus send you
their greetings.  You owe it to them that I leave you even your ready
money; I wish I could only carry away that dead lump there!"

During this rough speech Serapion was lying on the ground in great agony;
he could only clench his fists, and groan out heavy curses with his lips
which were now getting parched.  His sight was as yet undimmed, and he
could distinctly see by the light of the moon, which now shone forth from
a broad cloudless opening in the sky, that the murderer attempted to
carry away his fallen comrade, and then, after raising his head to listen
for a moment sprang off with flying steps away into the desert.  But the
recluse now lost consciousness, and when some minutes later he once more
opened his eyes his head was resting softly in the lap of a young girl,
and it was the voice of his beloved Klea that asked him tenderly.

"You poor dear father!  How came you here in the desert, and into the
hands of these murderers?  Do you know me--your Klea?  And he who is
looking for your wounds--which are not visible at all--he is the Roman
Publius Scipio.  Now first tell us where the dagger hit you that I may
bind it up quickly--I am half a physician, and understand these things as
you know."

The recluse tried to turn his head towards Klea's, but the effort was in
vain, and he said in a low voice: "Prop me up against the slanting wall
of the tomb shrine yonder; and you, child, sit down opposite to me, for I
would fain look at you while I die.  Gently, gently, my friend Publius,
for I feel as if all my limbs were made of Phoenician glass, and might
break at the least touch.  Thank you, my young friend--you have strong
arms, and you may lift me a little higher yet.  So--now I can bear it;
nay, I am well content, I am to be envied--for the moon shows me your
dear face, my child, and I see tears on your cheeks, tears for me, a
surly old man.  Aye, it is good, it is very good to die thus."

"Oh, father, father!"  cried Klea.  "You must not speak so.  You must
live, you must not die; for see, Publius here asks me to be his wife, and
the Immortals only can know how glad I am to go with him, and Irene is to
stay with us, and be my sister and his.  That must make you happy,
father.--But tell us, pray tell us where the wound hurts that the
murderer gave you?"

"Children,  children,"  murmured  the  anchorite, and a happy smile
parted his lips.  "The gracious gods are merciful in permitting me to see
that--aye, merciful to me, and to effect that end I would have died
twenty deaths."

Klea pressed his now cold hand to her lips as he spoke and again asked,
though hardly able to control her voice for tears:

"But the wound, father--where is the wound?"  "Let be, let be," replied
Serapion.  "It is acrid poison, not a dagger or dart that has undone my
strength.  And I can depart in peace, for I am no longer needed for
anything.  You, Publius, must now take my place with this child, and will
do it better than I.  Klea, the wife of Publius Scipio!  I indeed have
dreamt that such a thing might come to pass, and I always knew, and have
said to myself a thousand times that I now say to you my son: This girl
here, this Klea is of a good sort, and worthy only of the noblest.  I
give her to you, my son Publius, and now join your hands before me here
--for I have always been like a father to her."

That you have indeed," sobbed Klea.  "And it was no doubt for my sake,
and to protect me, that you quitted your retreat, and have met your
death."

"It was fate, it was fate," stammered the old man.

"The assassins were in ambush for me," cried Publius, seizing Serapion's
hand, "the murderers who fell on you instead of me.  Once more, where is
your wound?"

"My destiny fulfils itself," replied the recluse.  "No locked-up cell,
no physician, no healing herb can avail against the degrees of Fate.
I am dying of a serpent's sting as it was foretold at my birth; and if I
had not gone out to seek Klea a serpent would have slipped into my cage,
and have ended my life there.  Give me your hands, my children, for a
deadly chill is creeping over me, and its cold hand already touches my
heart."

For a few minutes his voice failed him, and then he said softly:

"One thing I would fain ask of you.  My little possessions, which were
intended for you and Irene, you will now use to bury me.  I do not wish
to be burnt, as they did with my father--no, I should wish to be finely
embalmed, and my mummy to be placed with my mother's.  If indeed we may
meet again after death--and I believe we shall--I would rather see her
once more than any one, for she loved me so much--and I feel now as if I
were a child again, and could throw my arms round her neck.  In another
life, perhaps, I may not be the child of misfortune that I have been in
this--in another life--now it grips my heart--in another----Children
whatever joys have smiled on me in this, children, it was to you I have
owed it--Klea, to you--and there is my little Irene too----"

These were the last words of Serapion the recluse; he fell back with a
deep sigh and was dead.  Klea and Publius tenderly closed his faithful
eyes.




CHAPTER XXIII.

The unwonted tumult that had broken the stillness of the night had not
been unobserved in the Greek Serapeum any more than in the Egyptian
temple adjoining the Apis-tombs; but perfect silence once more reigned in
the Necropolis, when at last the great gate of the sanctuary of Osiris-
Apis was thrown open, and a little troop of priests arranged in a
procession came out from it with a vanguard of temple servants, who had
been armed with sacrificial knives and axes.

Publius and Klea, who were keeping faithful watch by the body of their
dead friend, saw them approaching, and the Roman said:

"It would have been even less right in such a night as this to let you
proceed to one of the temples with out my escort than to have let our
poor friend remain unwatched."

"Once more I assure you," said Klea eagerly "that we should have thrown
away every chance of fulfilling Serapion's last wish as he intended, if
during our absence a jackal or a hyena had mutilated his body, and I am
happy to be able at least to prove to my friend, now he is dead, how
grateful I am for all the kindness he showed us while he lived.  We ought
to be grateful even to the departed, for how still and blissful has this
hour been while guarding his body.  Storm and strife brought us
together--"

"And here," interrupted Publius, "we have concluded a happy and permanent
treaty of peace for the rest of our lives."

"I accept it willingly," replied Klea, looking down, "for I am the
vanquished party."

"But you have already confessed," said Publius, "that you were never so
unhappy as when you thought you had asserted your strength against mine,
and I can tell you that you never seemed to me so great and yet so
lovable as when in the midst of your triumph, you gave up the battle for
lost.  Such an hour as that, a man experiences but once in his lifetime.
I have a good memory, but if ever I should forget it, and be angry and
passionate--as is sometimes my way--remind me of this spot, or of this
our dead friend, and my hard mood will melt, and I shall remember that
you once were ready to give your life for mine.  I will make it easy for
you, for in honor of this man, who sacrificed his life for yours and who
was actually murdered in my stead, I promise to add his name of Serapion
to my own, and I will confirm this vow in Rome.  He has behaved to us as
a father, and it behoves me to reverence his memory as though I had been
his son.  An obligation was always unendurable to me, and how I shall
ever make full restitution to you for what you have done for me this
night I do not yet know--and yet I should be ready and willing every day
and every hour to accept from you some new gift of love.  'A debtor,'
says the proverb, 'is half a prisoner,' and so I must entreat you to deal
mercifully with your conquerer."

He took her hand, stroked back the hair from her forehead, and touched it
lightly with his lips.  Then he went on:

"Come with me now that we may commit the dead into the hands of these
priests."

Klea once more bent over the remains of the anchorite, she hung the
amulet he had given her for her journey round his neck, and then silently
obeyed her lover.  When they came up with the little procession Publius
informed the chief priest how he had found Serapion, and requested him to
fetch away the corpse, and to cause it to be prepared for interment in
the costliest manner in the embalming house attached to their temple.
Some of the temple-servants took their places to keep watch over the
body, and after many questions addressed to Publius, and after examining
too the body of the assassin who had been slain, the priests returned to
the temple.

As soon as the two lovers were left alone again Klea seized the Roman's
hand, and said passionately: "You have spoken many tender words to me,
and I thank you for them; but I am wont always to be honest, and less
than any one could I deceive you.  Whatever your love bestows upon me
will always be a free gift, since you owe me nothing at all and I owe you
infinitely much; for I know now that you have snatched my sister from the
clutches of the mightiest in the land while I, when I heard that Irene
had gone away with you, and that murder threatened your life, believed
implicitly that on the contrary you had lured the child away to become
your sweetheart, and then--then I hated you, and then--I must confess it\
--in my horrible distraction I wished you dead!"

"And you think that wish can offend me or hurt me?"  said Publius.  "No,
my child; it only proves to me that you love me as I could wish to be
loved.  Such rage under such circumstances is but the dark shadow cast by
love, and is as inseparable from love as from any tangible body.  Where
it is absent there is no such thing as real love present--only an airy
vision, a phantom, a mockery.  Such an one as Klea does not love nor hate
by halves; but there are mysterious workings in your soul as in that of
every other woman.  How did the wish that you could see me dead turn into
the fearful resolve to let yourself be killed in my stead?"

"I saw the murderers," answered Klea, "and I was overwhelmed with horror
of them and of their schemes, and of all that had to do with them; I
would not destroy Irene's happiness, and I loved you even more deeply
than I hated you; and then--but let us not speak of it."

"Nay-tell me all."

"Then there was a moment--"

"Well, Klea?"

"Then--in these last hours, while we have been sitting hand in hand by
the body of poor Serapion, and hardly speaking, I have felt it all over
again--then the midnight hymn of the priests fell upon my heart, and as I
lifted up my soul in prayer at their pious chant I felt as if all my
inmost heart had been frozen and hardened, and was reviving again to new
life and tenderness and warmth.  I could not help thinking of all that is
good and right, and I made up my mind to sacrifice myself for you and for
Irene's happiness far more quickly and easily than I could give it up
afterwards.  My father was one of the followers of Zeno--"

"And you," interrupted Publius, "thought you were acting in accordance
with the doctrine of the Stoa.  I also am familiar with it, but I do not
know the man who is so virtuous and wise that he can live and act, as
that teaching prescribes, in the heat of the struggle of life, or who is
the living representative in flesh and blood of the whole code of ethics,
not sinning against one of its laws and embodying it in himself.  Did you
ever hear of the peace of mind, the lofty indifference and equanimity of
the Stoic sages?  You look as if the question offended you, but you did
not by any means know how to attain that magnanimity, for I have seen you
fail in it; indeed it is contrary to the very nature of woman, and--
the gods be thanked--you are not a Stoic in woman's dress, but a woman
--a true woman, as you should be.  You have learned nothing from Zeno and
Chrysippus but what any peasant girl might learn from an honest father,
to be true I mean and to love virtue.  Be content with that; I am more
than satisfied."

"Oh, Publius," exclaimed the girl, grasping her friend's hand.
"I understand you, and I know that you are right.  A woman must be
miserable so long as she fancies herself strong, and imagines and feels
that she needs no other support than her own firm will and determination,
no other counsel than some wise doctrines which she accepts and adheres
to.  Before I could call you mine, and went on my own way, proud of my
own virtue, I was--I cannot bear to think of it--but half a soul, and
took it for a whole; but now--if now fate were to snatch you from me, I
should still know where to seek the support on which I might lean in need
and despair.  Not in the Stoa, not in herself can a woman find such a
stay, but in pious dependence on the help of the gods."

"I am a man," interrupted Publius, "and yet I sacrifice to them and yield
ready obedience to their decrees."

"But," cried Klea, "I saw yesterday in the temple of Serapis the meanest
things done by his ministers, and it pained me and disgusted me, and I
lost my hold on the divinity; but the extremest anguish and deepest love
have led me to find it again.  I can no longer conceive of the power that
upholds the universe as without love nor of the love that makes men happy
as other than divine.  Any one who has once prayed for a being they love
as I prayed for you in the desert can never again forget how to pray.
Such prayers indeed are not in vain.  Even if no god can hear them there
is a strengthening virtue in such prayer itself.

"Now I will go contentedly back to our temple till you fetch me, for I
know that the discreetest, wisest, and kindest Beings will watch over our
love."

"You will not accompany me to Apollodorus and Irene?"  asked Publius in
surprise.

"No," answered Klea firmly.  "Rather take me back to the Serapeum.  I
have not yet been released from the duties I undertook there, and it will
be more worthy of us both that Asclepiodorus should give you the daughter
of Philotas as your wife than that you should be married to a runaway
serving-maid of Serapis."

Publius considered for a moment, and then he said eagerly:

"Still I would rather you should come with me.  You must be dreadfully
tired, but I could take you on my mule to Apollodorus.  I care little for
what men say of me when I am sure I am doing right, and I shall know how
to protect you against Euergetes whether you wish to be readmitted to the
temple or accompany me to the sculptor.  But do come--it will be hard on
me to part from you again.  The victor does not lay aside the crown when
he has just won it in hard fight."

"Still I entreat you to take me back to the Serapeum," said Klea, laying
her hand in that of Publius.

"Is the way to Memphis too long, are you utterly tired out?"

"I am much wearied by agitation and terror, by anxiety and happiness,
still I could very well bear the ride; but I beg of you to take me back
to the temple,"

"What--although you feel strong enough to remain with me, and in spite of
my desire to conduct you at once to Apollodorus and Irene?"  asked
Publius astonished, and he withdrew his hand.  "The mule is waiting out
there.  Lean on my arm.  Come and do as I request you."

"No, Publius, no.  You are my lord and master, and I will always obey you
unresistingly.  In one thing only let me have my own way, now and in the
future.  As to what becomes a woman I know better than you, it is a thing
that none but a woman can decide."

Publius made no reply to these words, but he kissed her, and threw his
arm round her; and so, clasped in each other's embrace, they reached the
gate of the Serapeum, there to part for a few hours.

Klea was let into the temple, and as soon as she had learned that little
Philo was much better, she threw herself on her humble bed.

How lonely her room seemed, how intolerably empty without Irene.  In
obedience to a hasty impulse she quitted her own bed, lay herself down on
her sister's, as if that brought her nearer to the absent girl, and
closed her eyes; but she was too much excited and too much exhausted to
sleep soundly.  Swiftly-changing visions broke in again and again on her
sincerely devotional thoughts and her restless half-sleep, painting to
her fancy now wondrously bright images, and now most horrible ones--now
pictures of exquisite happiness, and again others of dismal melancholy.
And all the time she imagined she heard distant music and was being
rocked up and down by unseen hands.

Still the image of the Roman overpowered all the rest.

At last a refreshing sleep sealed her eyes more closely, and in her dream
she saw her lover's house in Rolne, his stately father, his noble mother
--who seemed to her to bear a likeness to her own mother--and the figures
of a number of tall and dignified senators.  She felt herself much
embarrassed among all these strangers, who looked enquiringly at her, and
then kindly held out their hands to her.  Even the dignified matron came
to meet her with effusion, and clasped her to her breast; but just as
Publius had opened his to her and she flew to his heart, and she fancied
she could feel his lips pressed to hers, the woman, who called her every
morning, knocked at her door and awoke her.

This time she had been happy in her dream and would willingly have slept
again; but she forced herself to rise from her bed, and before the sun
was quite risen she was standing by the Well of the Sun and, not to
neglect her duty, she filled both the jars for the altar of the god.

Tired and half-overcome by sleep, she set the golden vessels in their
place, and sat down to rest at the foot of a pillar, while a priest
poured out the water she had brought, as a drink-offering on the ground.

It was now broad daylight as she looked out into the forecourt through
the many-pillared hall of the temple; the early sunlight played round the
columns, and its slanting rays, at this hour, fell through the tall
doorway far into the great hall which usually lay in twilight gloom.

The sacred spot looked very solemn in her eyes, sublime, and as it were
reconsecrated, and obeying an irresistible impulse she leaned against a
column, and lifting up her arms, and raising her eyes, she uttered her
thankfulness to the god for his loving kindness, and found but one thing
to pray for, namely that he would preserve Publius and Irene, and all
mankind, from sorrow and anxiety and deception.

She felt as if her heart had till now been benighted and dark, and had
just disclosed some latent light--as if it had been withered and dry, and
was now blossoming in fresh verdure and brightly-colored flowers.

To act virtuously is granted even to those who, relying on themselves.
earnestlv strive to lead moral, just and honest lives; but the happy
union of virtue and pure inner happiness is solemnized only in the heart
which is able to seek and find a God--be it Serapis or Jehovah.

At the door of the forecourt Klea was met by Asclepiodorus, who desired
her to follow him.  The high-priest had learned that she had secretly
quitted the temple: when she was alone with him in a quiet room he asked
her gravely and severely, why she had broken the laws and left the
sanctuary without his permission.  Klea told him, that terror for her
sister had driven her to Memphis, and that she there had heard that
Publics Cornelius Scipio, the Roman who had taken up her father's cause,
had saved Irene from king Euergetes, and placed her in safety, and that
then she had set out on her way home in the middle of the night.

The high-priest seemed pleased at her news, and when she proceeded to
inform him that Serapion had forsaken his cell out of anxiety for her,
and had met his death in the desert, he said:

"I knew all that, my child.  May the gods forgive the recluse, and may
Serapis show him mercy in the other world in spite of his broken oath!
His destiny had to be fulfilled.  You, child, were born under happier
stars than he, and it is within my power to let you go unpunished.  This
I  do willingly; and  Klea, if my daughter Andromeda grows up, I can only
wish that she may resemble you; this is the highest praise that a father
can bestow on another man's daughter.  As head of this temple I command
you to fill your jars to-day, as usual, till one who is worthy of you
comes to me, and asks you for his wife.  I suspect he will not be long to
wait for."

"How do you know, father,--" asked Klea, coloring.

"I can read it in your eyes," said Asclepiodorus, and he gazed kindly
after her as, at a sign from him, she quitted the room.

As soon as he was alone he sent for his secretary and said:

"King Philometor has commanded that his brother Euergetes' birthday shall
be kept to-day in Memphis.  Let all the standards be hoisted, and the
garlands of flowers which will presently arrive from Arsinoe be fastened
up on the pylons; have the animals brought in for sacrifice, and arrange
a procession for the afternoon.  All the dwellers in the temple must be
carefully attired.  But there is another thing; Komanus has been here,
and has promised us great things in Euergetes' name, and declares that he
intends to punish his brother Philometor for having abducted a girl--
Irene--attached to our temple.  At the same time he requests me to send
Klea the water-bearer, the sister of the girl who was carried off, to
Memphis to be examined--but this may be deferred.  For to-day we will
close the temple gates, solemnize the festival among ourselves, and allow
no one to enter our precincts for sacrifice and prayer till the fate of
the sisters is made certain.  If the kings themselves make their
appearance, and want to bring their troops in, we will receive them
respectfully as becomes us, but we will not give up Klea, but consign her
to the holy of holies, which even Euergetes dare not enter without me;
for in giving up the girl we sacrifice our dignity, and with that
ourselves."

The secretary bowed, and then announced that two of the prophets of
Osiris-Apis desired to speak with Asclepiodorus.

Klea had met these men in the antechamber as she quitted the high-priest,
and had seen in the hand of one of them the key with which she had opened
the door of the rock-tomb.  She had started, and her conscience urged her
to go at once to the priest-smith, and tell him how ill she had fulfilled
her errand.

When she entered his room Krates was sitting at his work with his feet
wrapped up, and he was rejoiced to see her, for his anxiety for her and
for Irene had disturbed his night's rest, and towards morning his alarm
had been much increased by a frightful dream.

Klea, encouraged by the friendly welcome of the old man, who was usually
so surly, confessed that she had neglected to deliver the key to the
smith in the city, that she had used it to open the Apis-tombs, and had
then forgotten to take it out of the new lock.  At this confession the
old man broke out violently, he flung his file, and the iron bolt at
which he was working, on to his work-table, exclaiming:

"And this is the way you executed your commission.  It is the first time
I ever trusted a woman, and this is my reward!  All this will bring evil
on you and on me, and when it is found out that the sanctuary of Apis has
been desecrated through my fault and yours, they will inflict all sorts
of penance on me, and with very good reason--as for you, they will punish
you with imprisonment and starvation."

"And yet, father," Klea calmly replied, "I feel perfectly guiltless, and
perhaps in the same fearful situation you might not have acted
differently."

"You think so--you dare to believe such a thing?"  stormed the old man.
"And if the key and perhaps even the lock have been stolen, and if I
have done all that beautiful and elaborate work in vain?"

"What thief would venture into the sacred tombs?"  asked Klea doubtfully.

"What!  are they so unapproachable?" interrupted Krates.  "Why, a
miserable creature like you even dared to open them.  But only wait--only
wait; if only my feet were not so painful--"

"Listen to me," said the girl, going closer up to the indignant smith.
"You are discreet, as you proved to me only yesterday; and if I were to
tell you all I went through and endured last night you would certainly
forgive me, that I know."

"If you are not altogether mistaken!" shouted the smith.  "Those must be
strange things indeed which could induce me to let such neglect of duty
and such a misdemeanor pass unpunished."

And strange things they were indeed which the old man now had to hear,
for when Klea had ended her narrative of all that had occurred during the
past night, not her eyes only but those of the old smith too were wet
with tears.

"These accursed legs!"  he muttered, as his eyes met the enquiring glance
of the young girl, and he wiped the salt dew from his cheeks with the
sleeve of his coat.  "Aye-a swelled foot like mine is painful, child, and
a cripple such as I am is not always strong-minded.  Old women grow like
men, and old men grow like women.  Ah! old age--it is bad to have such
feet as mine, but what is worse is that memory fades as years advance.
I believe now that I left the key myself in the door of the Apis-tombs
last evening, and I will send at once to Asclepiodorus, so that he may
beg the Egyptians up there to forgive me--they are indebted to me for
many small jobs."




CHAPTER XXIV.

All the black masses of clouds which during the night had darkened the
blue sky and hidden the light of the moon had now completely disappeared.
The north-east wind which rose towards morning had floated them away, and
Zeus, devourer of the clouds, had swallowed them up to the very last.  It
was a glorious morning, and as the sun rose in the heavens, and pierced
and burnt up with augmenting haste the pale mist that hovered over the
Nile, and the vapor that hung--a delicate transparent veil of bluish-grey
bombyx-gauze--over the eastern slopes, the cool shades of night vanished
too from the dusky nooks of the narrow town which lay, mile-wide, along
the western bank of the river.  And the intensely brilliant sunlight
which now bathed the streets and houses, the palaces and temples, the
gardens and avenues, and the innumerable vessels in the harbor of
Memphis, was associated with a glow of warmth which was welcome even
there in the early morning of a winter's day.

Boats' captains and sailors--were hurrying down to the shore of the Nile
to avail themselves of the northeast breeze to travel southwards against
the current, and sails were being hoisted and anchors heaved, to an