s that it brought before her
mind. Was she awake or was she a prey to some horrid dream?

She hardly knew, and, indeed, she scarcely understood half of all she
heard till the Roman's name was mentioned. She felt as if the point of a
thin, keen knife was being driven obliquely through her brain from right
to left, as it now flashed through her mind that it was against him,
against Publius, that the wild beasts, disguised in human form, were
directed by Eulaeus, and face to face with this--the most hideous, the
most incredible of horrors--she suddenly recovered the full use of her
senses. She softly slipped close to that rift in the partition through
which the broadest beam of light fell into the room, put her ear close to
it, and drank in, with fearful attention, word for word the report made
by the eunuch to his iniquitous superior, who frequently interrupted him
with remarks, words of approval or a short laugh-drank them in, as a man
perishing in the desert drinks the loathsome waters of a salt pool.

And what she heard was indeed well fitted to deprive her of her senses,
but the more definite the facts to which the words referred that she
could overhear, the more keenly she listened, and the more resolutely she
collected her thoughts. Eulaeus had used her own name to induce the Roman
to keep an assignation at midnight in the desert close to the Apis-tombs.
He repeated the words that he had written to this effect on a tile, and
which requested Publius to come quite alone to the spot indicated, since
she dare not speak with him in the temple. Finally he was invited to
write his answer on the other side of the square of clay. As Klea heard
these words, put into her own mouth by a villain, she could have sobbed
aloud heartily with anguish, shame, and rage; but the point now was to
keep her ears wide open, for Euergetes asked his odious tool:

"And what was the Roman's answer?" Eulaeus must have handed the tile to
the king, for he laughed loudly again, and cried out:

"So he will walk into the trap--will arrive by half an hour after
midnight at the latest, and greets Klea from her sister Irene. He carries
on love-making and abduction wholesale, and buys water-bearers by the
pair, like doves in the market or sandals in a shoe maker's stall. Only
see how the simpleton writes Greek; in these few words there are two
mistakes, two regular schoolboys' blunders.

"The fellow must have had a very pleasant day of it, since he mu