Impressed, excited, bewildered by the language of the Egyptian, Apaecides gave him his hand, and master and pupil parted.

It was true that for Apaecides there was no retreat.  He had taken the vows of celibacy:  he had devoted himself to a life that at present seemed to possess all the austerities of fanaticism, without any of the consolations of belief It was natural that he should yet cling to a yearning desire to reconcile himself to an irrevocable career.  The powerful and profound mind of the Egyptian yet claimed an empire over his young imagination; excited him with vague conjecture, and kept him alternately vibrating between hope and fear.

Meanwhile Arbaces pursued his slow and stately way to the house of Ione.  As he entered the tablinum, he heard a voice from the porticoes of the peristyle beyond, which, musical as it was, sounded displeasingly on his ear—­it was the voice of the young and beautiful Glaucus, and for the first time an involuntary thrill of jealousy shot through the breast of the Egyptian.  On entering the peristyle, he found Glaucus seated by the side of Ione.  The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver spray in the air, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the sultry noon.  The handmaids, almost invariably attendant on Ione, who with her freedom of life preserved the most delicate modesty, sat at a little distance; by the feet of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had been playing to Ione one of the Lesbian airs.  The scene—­the group before Arbaces, was stamped by that peculiar and refined ideality of poesy which we yet, not erroneously, imagine to be the distinction of the ancients—­the marble columns, the vases of flowers, the statue, white and tranquil, closing every vista; and, above all, the two living forms, from which a sculptor might have caught either inspiration or despair!

Arbaces, pausing for a moment, gazed on the pair with a brow from which all the usual stern serenity had fled; he recovered himself by an effort, and slowly approached them, but with a step so soft and echoless, that even the attendants heard him not; much less Ione and her lover.

‘And yet,’ said Glaucus, ’it is only before we love that we imagine that our poets have truly described the passion; the instant the sun rises, all the stars that had shone in his absence vanish into air.  The poets exist only in the night of the heart; they are nothing to us when we feel the full glory of the god.’

‘A gentle and most glowing image, noble Glaucus.’

Both started, and recognized behind the seat of Ione the cold and sarcastic face of the Egyptian.

‘You are a sudden guest,’ said Glaucus, rising, and with a forced smile.

‘So ought all to be who know they are welcome,’ returned Arbaces, seating himself, and motioning to Glaucus to do the same.

‘I am glad,’ said Ione, ’to see you at length together; for you are suited to each other, and you are formed to be friends.’