rotects the good, in whom she now again had
faith, though for Him she knew no name; as a daughter, pursued by foes,
might clasp her powerful father's knees and claim his succor.

She had not stood thus with uplifted arms for many minutes when the
moon, once more appearing, recalled her to herself and to actuality.
She now perceived close to her, at hardly a hundred paces from where she
stood, the line of sphinxes by the side of which lay the tombs of Apis
near which she was to await Publius. Her heart began to beat faster
again, and her dread of her own weakness revived. In a few minutes she
must meet the Roman, and, involuntarily putting up her hand to smooth
her hair, she was reminded that she still wore Glaucus' hat on her head
and his cloak wrapped round her shoulders. Lifting up her heart again
in a brief prayer for a calm and collected mind, she slowly arranged her
dress and its folds, and as she did so the key of the tomb-cave, which
she still had about her, fell under her hand. An idea flashed through
her brain--she caught at it, and with hurried breath followed it out,
till she thought she had now hit upon the right way to preserve from
death the man who was so rich and powerful, who had given her nothing
but taken everything from her, and to whom, nevertheless, she--the poor
water-bearer whom he had thought to trifle with--could now bestow the
most precious of the gifts of the immortals, namely, life.

Serapion had said, and she was willing to believe, that Publius was not
base, and he certainly was not one of those who could prove ungrateful
to a preserver. She longed to earn the right to demand something of him,
and that could be nothing else but that he should give up her sister and
bring Irene back to her.

When could it be that he had come to an understanding with the
inexperienced and easily wooed maiden? How ready she must have been to
clasp the hand held out to her by this man! Nothing surprised her in
Irene, the child of the present; she could comprehend too that Irene's
charm might quickly win the heart even of a grave and serious man.

And yet--in all the processions it was never Irene that he had gazed at,
but always herself, and how came it to pass that he had given a prompt
and ready assent to the false invitation to go out to meet her in the
desert at midnight? Perhaps she was still nearer to his heart than
Irene, and if gratitude drew him to her with fresh force then--aye
then--he might perh