riving from
Upper Egypt to the temple of Serapis and the tombs of the sacred bulls;
he could therefore very decidedly refuse the host's offer to send a
driver with the beast. All who saw him set out supposed that he was
returning to the city and the palace.

Publius rode through the streets of the city at an easy trot, and, as
the laughter of soldiers carousing in a tavern fell upon his ear, he
could have joined heartily in their merriment. But when the silent
desert lay around him, and the stars showed him that he would be much
too early at the appointed place, he brought the mule to a slower pace,
and the nearer he came to his destination the graver he grew, and the
stronger his heart beat. It must be something important and pressing
indeed that Klea desired to tell him in such a place and at such an
hour. Or was she like a thousand other women--was he now on the way to
a lover's meeting with her, who only a few days before had responded to
his glance and accepted his violets?

This thought flashed once through his mind with importunate
distinctness, but he dismissed it as absurd and unworthy of himself.
A king would be more likely to offer to share his throne with a beggar
than this girl would be to invite him to enjoy the sweet follies of
love-making with her in a secret spot.

Of course she wanted above all things to acquire some certainty as to
her sister's fate, perhaps too to speak to him of her parents; still,
she would hardly have made up her mind to invite him if she had not
learned to trust him, and this confidence filled him with pride, and at
the same time with an eager longing to see her, which seemed to storm
his heart with more violence with every minute that passed.

While the mule sought and found its way in the deep darkness with slow
and sure steps, he gazed up at the firmament, at the play of the clouds
which now covered the moon with their black masses, and now parted,
floating off in white sheeny billows while the silver crescent of the
moon showed between them like a swan against the dark mirror of a lake.

And all the time he thought incessantly of Klea--thinking in a dreamy
way that he saw her before him, but different and taller than before,
her form growing more and more before his eyes till at last it was so
tall that her head touched the sky, the clouds seemed to be her veil,
and the moon a brilliant diadem in her abundant dark hair. Powerfully
stirred by this vision he let the bridle