therwise than as if she were the
daughter of your dearest friend or of your own brother."

"I swear it and I will keep my oath--by the life of the man whose head is
more sacred to me than the names of all the gods. But now I beseech you,
I command you open this door, Klea--that I may not lose you--that I may
tell you that my whole heart is yours, and yours alone--that I love you,
love you unboundedly."

"I have your oath," cried the girl in great excitement, for she could now
see a shadow moving backwards and forwards at some distance in the
desert. "You have sworn by the head of your father. Never let Irene
repent having gone with you, and love her always as you fancy now, in
this moment, that you love me, your preserver. Remember both of you the
hapless Klea who would gladly have lived for you, but who now gladly dies
for you. Do not forget me, Publius, for I have never but this once opened
my heart to love, but I have loved you Publius, with pain and torment,
and with sweet delight--as no other woman ever yet revelled in the
ecstasy of love or was consumed in its torments." She almost shouted the
last words at the Roman as if she were chanting a hymn of triumph, beside
herself, forgetting everything and as if intoxicated.

Why was he now silent, why had he nothing to answer, since she had
confessed to him the deepest secret of her breast, and allowed him to
look into the inmost sanctuary of her heart? A rush of burning words from
his lips would have driven her off at once to the desert and to death;
his silence held her back--it puzzled her and dropped like cool rain on
the soaring flames of her pride, fell on the raging turmoil of her soul
like oil on troubled water. She could not part from him thus, and her
lips parted to call him once more by his name.

While she had been making confession of her love to the Roman as if it
were her last will and testament, Publius felt like a man dying of
thirst, who has been led to a flowing well only to be forbidden to
moisten his lips with the limpid fluid. His soul was filled with
passionate rage approaching to despair, and as with rolling eyes he
glanced round his prison an iron crow-bar leaning against the wall met
his gaze; it had been used by the workmen to lift the sarcophagus of the
last deceased Apis into its right place. He seized upon this tool, as a
drowning man flings himself on a floating plank: still he heard Klea's
last words, and did not lose one of them, tho