answer, but with all she said she rarely raised her eyes.
The longer you look at her the lovelier she is--and yet she is still a
mere child-though a child certainly who no longer loves staying at home,
who has dreams of splendor, and enjoyment, and freedom while she is kept
shut up in a dismal, dark place, and left to starve.

"The poor creatures may never quit the temple excepting for a
procession, or before sunrise. It sounded too delightful when she said
that she was always so horribly tired, and so glad to go to sleep again
after she was waked, and had to go out at once just when it is coldest,
in the twilight before sunrise. Then she has to draw water from a
cistern called the Well of the Sun."

"Do you know where that cistern lies?" asked Publius.

"Behind the acacia-grove," answered Lysias. "The guide pointed it out to
me. It is said to hold particularly sacred water, which must be poured
as a libation to the god at sunrise, unmixed with any other. The girls
must get up so early, that as soon as dawn breaks water from this
cistern shall not be lacking at the altar of Serapis. It is poured out
on the earth by the priests as a drink-offering."

Publius had listened attentively, and had not lost a word of his
friend's narrative. He now quitted him hastily, opened the tent-door,
and went out into the night, looking up to discover the hour from
the stars which were silently pursuing their everlasting courses in
countless thousands, and sparkling with extraordinary brilliancy in the
deep blue sky. The moon was already set, and the morning-star was slowly
rising--every night since the Roman had been in the land of the Pyramids
he had admired its magnificent size and brightness.

A cold breeze fanned the young man's brow, and as he drew his robe
across his breast with a shiver, he thought of the sisters, who, before
long, would have to go out in the fresh morning air. Once more he raised
his eyes from the earth to the firmament over his head, and it seemed to
him that he saw before his very eyes the proud form of Klea, enveloped
in a mantle sown over with stars. His heart throbbed high, and he felt
as if the breeze that his heaving breast inhaled in deep breaths was as
fresh and pure as the ether that floats over Elysium, and of a strange
potency withal, as if too rare to breathe. Still he fancied he saw
before him the image of Klea, but as he stretched out his hand towards
the beautiful vision it vanished--a sound