eft his
room--tried to pacify the Arab merchant with regard to the mishap that
had befallen his head man under the governor's roof; but with small
success.

Finally the young man had indulged his desire to compose a few lines
addressed to the fair Heliodora--for there was no form of physical or
mental effort to which he was not trained. He had not lost the idea that
had occurred to him yesterday before his theft in the tablinum, and
to put it into verse was in his present mood an easy task. He wrote as
follows:

"'Like liketh like' saith the saw; and like to like is but fitting.
Yet, in the hardest of gems thy soft nature rejoices?
Nay, but if noble and rare, if its beauty is priceless,
Then, Heliodora, the stone is like thee--akin to thy beauty.
Thus let this emerald please thee;--and know that the fire
That fills it with light burns more fierce in the heart of thy
Friend."

He penned the lines rapidly; and as he did so he felt, he knew not why,
an excited thrill, as though every word he threw off was a blow aimed
at Paula. Last night he had intended to send the costly jewel to
the handsome widow in a suitable setting; but now it would be madly
imprudent to order such a thing. He must send it away at once; he had
hastened to pack it up with the verses, with his own hand, and entrusted
it to Chusar, a horsedealer's groom from Constantinople, who had
brought his Pannonian steeds to Memphis. He had himself seen off this
trustworthy messenger, who could speak no Egyptian and very little
Greek, and when his horse was lost to sight in the dust of the road
leading to Alexandria he had returned home in a calmer mood. Ships were
constantly putting to sea from that port for Constantinople, and Chusar
was enjoined to sail by the first that should be leaving. At least the
odious deed should not have been committed in vain; and yet he would
have given a year of his life if now he could but know that it had never
been done.

"Impossible!" and "Curse it!" were the words he had most frequently
repeated in the course of his retrospect during the past night and
morning. How he had had to rush and hurry under the broiling sun! and
the sense of being compelled to do so for mere concealment's sake seemed
to him--who had never in his life before done anything that he could not
justify in the eyes of honest men--so humiliating, that it brought the
sweat to his burning brow. He--Orion--to