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