guileless than his darling
in his own home; and just as his sister had trusted him--offering him the
best she had to give--so this simple child trusted him; him, the
profligate Lysias, before whom all the modest women of Corinth cast down
their eyes, while fathers warned their growing-up sons against him;
trusted him with her virgin self--nay, as he thought, her sacred person.

"I will do thee no harm, sweet child!" he murmured to himself, as he
presently turned on his heel to return to the well. He went forward
quickly at first, but after a few steps he paused before the marvellous
and glorious picture that met his gaze. Was Memphis in flames? Had fire
fallen to burn up the shroud of mist which had veiled his way to the
temple?

The trunks of the acacia-trees stood up like the blackened pillars of a
burning city, and behind them the glow of a conflagration blazed high up
to the heavens. Beams of violet and gold slipped and sparkled between the
boughs, and danced among the thorny twigs, the white racemes of flowers,
and the tufts of leaves with their feathery leaflets; the clouds above
were fired with tints more pure and tender than those of the roses with
which Cleopatra had decked herself for the banquet.

Not like this did the sun rise in his own country! Or, was it perhaps
only that in Corinth or in Athens at break of day, as he staggered home
drunk from some feast, he had looked more at the earth than at the
heavens?

His horses began now to neigh loudly as if to greet the steeds of the
coming Sun-god. Lysias hurried to them through the grove, patted their
shining necks with soothing words, and stood looking down at the vast
city at his feet, over which hung a film of violet mist--at the solemn
Pyramids, over which the morning glow flung a gay robe of rose-color--on
the huge temple of Ptah, with the great colossi in front of its
pylons--on the Nile, mirroring the glory of the sky, and on the limestone
hills behind the villages of Babylon and Troy, about which he had, only
yesterday, heard a Jew at the king's table relating a legend current
among his countrymen to the effect that these hills had been obliged to
give up all their verdure to grace the mounts of the sacred city
Hierosolyma.

The rocky cliffs of this barren range glowed at this moment like the fire
in the heart of the great ruby which had clasped the festal robe of King
Euergetes across his bull-neck, as it reflected the shimmer of the
tapers: an