“By Zeus, speak faster and to the point!” cried Agias.

“Oh, there wasn’t very much to it all!  Why, how excited you are!  Pratinas came into the atrium, and Calatinus was already there.  I heard the latter say, ’So I am to give you forty thousand sesterces for the little girl you had with you at the circus yesterday?’ And Pratinas replied, ’Yes, if she pleases you.  I told you her name was Artemisia, and that I always taught her to believe that she was my niece.’”

“Hei!  Hei!” groaned Agias, rushing up and down the room, half frantic.  “Don’t tell any more, I’ve heard enough!  Fool, fool I have been, to sit in the sunshine, and never think of preparing to carry out my promise to Sesostris.  No, you must tell me—­you must tell me if you have learned any more.  Did Calatinus fix on any time at which he was to take possession of the poor girl?”

“No,” replied the still amazed Pisander.  “I did not hear the whole conversation.  There was something about ‘a very few days,’ and then Pratinas began to condole with Calatinus over being beaten for the tribunate after having spent so much money for the canvass.  But why are you so stirred up?  As Plato very admirably observes in his ’Philebus’—­”

“The Furies seize upon your ’Philebus’!” thundered Agias.  “Keep quiet, if you’ve nothing good to tell!  Oh, Agias, Agias! where are your wits, where is your cunning?  What in the world can I do?”

And so he poured out his distress and anger.  But, after all, there was nothing to be done that night.  Pisander, who at last began to realize the dilemma of his friend, ventured on a sort of sympathy which was worse than no sympathy at all, for philosophical platitudes are ever the worst of consolations.  Agias invited the good man to spend the night with him, and not risk a second time the robbers of the streets.  The young Greek himself finally went to bed, with no definite purpose in his mind except to rescue Artemisia, at any and every hazard, from falling into the clutches of Calatinus, who was perhaps the one man in the world Agias detested the most heartily.

II

Early in the morning Agias was awake.  He had slept very little.  The face of Artemisia was ever before him, and he saw it bathed in tears, and clouded with anguish and terror.  But, early as he arose, it was none too early.  Dromo, one of his slaves, came to announce to his dread lord that an aged Ethiop was waiting to see him, and Agias did not need to be told that this was Sesostris.

That faithful servant of an unworthy master was indeed in a pitiable condition.  His ordinarily neat and clean dress was crumpled and disarranged, as though he had not changed it during the night, but had rather been tossing and wakeful.  His eyes were swollen, and tears were trickling down his cheeks.  His voice had sunk to a husky choking, and when he stood before Agias he was unable to get out a word, but, after a few vain attempts which ended in prolonged sniffles, thrust into his young friend’s hand a tablet.