“Then I was shown into the temple of Serapis, where a priest was instructing some girls in singing, and then sent hither and thither, till at last, finding no trace whatever of the famous Irene, I came to the dwelling-house of the gate-keeper of the temple.

“An ungainly woman opened the door, and said that Irene had been gone from thence for some long time, but that her elder sister was there, so I desired she might be fetched to speak with me.  And what, if you please, was the answer I received?  The goddess Klea—­I call her so as being sister to a Hebe—­had to nurse a sick child, and if I wanted to see her I might go in and find her.

“The tone of the message quite conveyed that the distance from her down to me was as great as in fact it is the other way.  However, I thought it worth the trouble to see this supercilious water-bearing girl, and I went into a low room—­it makes me sick now to remember how it smelt of poverty—­and there she sat with an idiotic child, dying on her lap.  Everything that surrounded me was so revolting and dismal that it will haunt my dreams with terror for weeks to come and spoil all my cheerful hours.

“I did not remain long with these wretched creatures, but I must confess that if Irene is as like to Hebe as her elder sister is to Hera, Euergetes has good grounds for being angry if Asclepiodorus keeps the girl from him.

“Many a queen—­and not least the one whom you and I know so intimately-would willingly give half of her kingdom to possess such a figure and such a mien as this serving-girl.  And then her eyes, as she looked at me when she rose with that little gasping corpse in her arms, and asked me what I wanted with her sister!

“There was an impressive and lurid glow in those solemn eyes, which looked as if they had been taken out of some Medusa’s head to be set in her beautiful face.  And there was a sinister threat in them too which seemed to say:  ’Require nothing of her that I do not approve of, or you will be turned into stone on the spot.’  She did not answer twenty words to my questions, and when I once more tasted the fresh air outside, which never seemed to me so pleasant as by contrast with that horrible hole, I had learnt no more than that no one knew—­or chose to know—­in what corner the fair Irene was hidden, and that I should do well to make no further enquiries.

“And now, what will Philometor do?  What will you advise him to do?”

“What cannot be got at by soft words may sometimes be obtained by a sufficiently large present,” replied Eulaeus.  “You know very well that of all words none is less familiar to these gentry than the little word ‘enough’; but who indeed is really ready to say it?