an hour, for it is one of the king's, and when the banquet is
over there may be a scarcity of chariots."

"Yes--I will go back to the place I came from," said Klea eagerly,
interrupting the messenger. "Take me at once to the chariot."

"Follow me, then," said the old man.

"But I have no veil," observed Klea, "and have only this thin robe on.
Rough soldiers snatched my wrapper from my face, and my cloak from off
my shoulders."

"I will bring you the captain's cloak which is lying here in the
orderly's room, and his travelling-hat too; that will hide your face
with its broad flap. You are so tall that you might be taken for a man,
and that is well, for a woman leaving the palace at this hour would
hardly pass unmolested. A slave shall fetch the things from your temple
to-morrow. I may inform you that my master ordered me take as much care
of you as if you were his own daughter. And he told me too--and I had
nearly forgotten it--to tell you that your sister was carried off by
the Roman, and not by that other dangerous man, you would know whom he
meant. Now wait, pray, till I return; I shall not be long gone."

In a few minutes the guard returned with a large cloak in which he
wrapped Klea, and a broad-brimmed travelling-hat which she pressed down
on her head, and he then conducted her to that quarter of the palace
where the king's stables were. She kept close to the officer, and was
soon mounted on a chariot, and then conducted by the driver--who took
her for a young Macedonian noble, who was tempted out at night by
some assignation--as far as the second tavern on the road back to the
Serapeum.

CHAPTER XIX.

While Klea had been listening to the conversation between Euergetes and
Eulaeus, Cleopatra had been sitting in her tent, and allowing herself to
be dressed with no less care than on the preceding evening, but in other
garments.

It would seem that all had not gone so smoothly as she wished during the
day, for her two tire-women had red eyes. Her lady-in-waiting, Zoe, was
reading to her, not this time from a Greek philosopher but from a Greek
translation of the Hebrew Psalms: a discussion as to their poetic merit
having arisen a few days previously at the supper-table. Onias, the
Israelite general, had asserted that these odes might be compared with
those of Alcman or of Pindar, and had quoted certain passages that had
pleased the queen. To-day she was not disposed for thought, but wanted
something st