He had seen the land of poetry chiefly in the poetical age of early youth; and the associations of patriotism were blended with those of the flush and spring of life.  And Ione listened to him, absorbed and mute; dearer were those accents, and those descriptions, than all the prodigal adulation of her numberless adorers.  Was it a sin to love her countryman? she loved Athens in him—­the gods of her race, the land of her dreams, spoke to her in his voice!  From that time they daily saw each other.  At the cool of the evening they made excursions on the placid sea.  By night they met again in Ione’s porticoes and halls.  Their love was sudden, but it was strong; it filled all the sources of their life.  Heart—­brain—­sense—­imagination, all were its ministers and priests.  As you take some obstacle from two objects that have a mutual attraction, they met, and united at once; their wonder was, that they had lived separate so long.  And it was natural that they should so love.  Young, beautiful, and gifted—­of the same birth, and the same soul—­there was poetry in their very union.  They imagined the heavens smiled upon their affection.  As the persecuted seek refuge at the shrine, so they recognized in the altar of their love an asylum from the sorrows of earth; they covered it with flowers—­they knew not of the serpents that lay coiled behind.

One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, Glaucus and Ione, with a small party of chosen friends, were returning from an excursion round the bay; their vessel skimmed lightly over the twilight waters, whose lucid mirror was only broken by the dripping oars.  As the rest of the party conversed gaily with each other, Glaucus lay at the feet of Ione, and he would have looked up in her face, but he did not dare.  Ione broke the pause between them.

‘My poor brother,’ said she, sighing, ’how once he would have enjoyed this hour!’

‘Your brother!’ said Glaucus; ’I have not seen him.  Occupied with you, I have thought of nothing else, or I should have asked if that was not your brother for whose companionship you left me at the Temple of Minerva, in Neapolis?’

‘It was.’

‘And is he here?’

’He is.

‘At Pompeii! and not constantly with you?  Impossible!’

‘He has other duties,’ answered Ione, sadly; ‘he is a priest of Isis.’

‘So young, too; and that priesthood, in its laws at least, so severe!’ said the warm and bright-hearted Greek, in surprise and pity.  ’What could have been his inducement?’

’He was always enthusiastic and fervent in religious devotion:  and the eloquence of an Egyptian—­our friend and guardian—­kindled in him the pious desire to consecrate his life to the most mystic of our deities.  Perhaps in the intenseness of his zeal, he found in the severity of that peculiar priesthood its peculiar attraction.’

‘And he does not repent his choice?—­I trust he is happy.’