he other by the
subtlety of his conception. I call that an unprejudiced judgment. And
why should not a man be great even as a murderer? From what hangman's
noose did you drag out the neck of one, and from what headsman's block
did you rescue the other when you found them?

"It is a lucky hour in which we first see something new to us, and,
by Heracles! I never before in the whole course of my life saw such
villains as these. I do not regret having gone to see them and talked to
them as if I were their equal. Now, take this torn coat off me, and help
me to undress. Before I go to the feast I will take a hasty plunge in my
bath, for I twitch in every limb, I feel as if I had got dirty in their
company.

"There lie my clothes and my sandals; strap them on for me, and tell me
as you do it how you lured the Roman into the toils."

Klea could hear every word of this frightful conversation, and clasped
her hand over her brow with a shudder, for she found it difficult to
believe in the reality of the hideous images 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