So said Glaucus. But that very night, in a house at Pompeii, whither she
had come from Naples during his absence, Glaucus came face to face once
more with the beautiful lone, the object of his dreams. And no longer
was he able to say, "I do not love."


_II.--Arbaces, the Egyptian_


Amongst the wealthy dwellers in Pompeii was one who lived apart, and was
at once an object of suspicion and fear. The riches of this man, who was
known as Arbaces, the Egyptian, enabled him to gratify to the utmost the
passions which governed him--the passion of sensual indulgence and the
blind force which impelled him to seek relief from physical satiety in
the pursuit of that occult knowledge which he regarded as the heritage
of his race.

In Naples, Arbaces had known the parents of Ione and her brother
Apaecides, and it was under his guardianship that they had come to
Pompeii. The confidence which, before their death, their parents had
reposed in the Egyptian was in turn fully given to him by lone and her
brother. For Apaecides the Egyptian felt nothing but contempt; the youth
was to him but an instrument that might be used by him in bending lone
to his will. But the mind of Ione, no less than the beauty of her form,
appealed to Arbaces. With her by his side, his willing slave, he saw no
limit to the heights his ambition might soar to. He sought primarily to
impress her with his store of unfamiliar knowledge. She, in turn,
admired him for his learning, and felt grateful to him for his
guardianship. Apaecides, docile and mild, with a soul peculiarly alive
to religious fervour, Arbaces placed amongst the priests of Isis, and