,
"I feel as if I had lost my parents a second time."

CHAPTER V.

The procession was over.

At the great service which had been performed before him in the Greek
Serapeum, Ptolemy Philometor had endowed the priests not with the whole
but with a considerable portion of the land concerning which they had
approached him with many petitions. After the court had once more quitted
Memphis and the procession was broken up, the sisters returned to their
room, Irene with crimson cheeks and a smile on her lips, Klea with a
gloomy and almost threatening light in her eyes.

As the two were going to their room in silence a temple-servant called to
Klea, desiring her to go with him to the high-priest, who wished to speak
to her. Klea, without speaking, gave her water-jar to Irene and was
conducted into a chamber of the temple, which was used for keeping the
sacred vessels in. There she sat down on a bench to wait. The two men who
in the morning had visited the Pastophorium had also followed in the
procession with the royal family. At the close of the solemnities Publius
had parted from his companion without taking leave, and without looking
to the right or to the left, he had hastened back to the Pastophorium and
to the cell of Serapion, the recluse.

The old man heard from afar the younger man's footstep, which fell on the
earth with a firmer and more decided tread than that of the
softly-stepping priests of Serapis, and he greeted him warmly with signs
and words.

Publius thanked him coolly and gravely, and said, dryly enough and with
incisive brevity:

"My time is limited. I propose shortly to quit Memphis, but I promised
you to hear your request, and in order to keep my word I have come to see
you; still--as I have said--only to keep my word. The water-bearers of
whom you desired to speak to me do not interest me--I care no more about
them than about the swallows flying over the house yonder."

"And yet this morning you took a long walk for Klea's sake," returned
Serapion.

"I have often taken a much longer one to shoot a hare," answered the
Roman. "We men do not pursue our game because the possession of it is any
temptation, but because we love the sport, and there are sporting natures
even among women. Instead of spears or arrows they shoot with flashing
glances, and when they think they have hit their game they turn their
back upon it. Your Klea is one of this sort, while the pretty little one
I saw this mor