“The poor creatures may never quit the temple excepting for a procession, or before sunrise.  It sounded too delightful when she said that she was always so horribly tired, and so glad to go to sleep again after she was waked, and had to go out at once just when it is coldest, in the twilight before sunrise.  Then she has to draw water from a cistern called the Well of the Sun.”

“Do you know where that cistern lies?” asked Publius.

“Behind the acacia-grove,” answered Lysias.  “The guide pointed it out to me.  It is said to hold particularly sacred water, which must be poured as a libation to the god at sunrise, unmixed with any other.  The girls must get up so early, that as soon as dawn breaks water from this cistern shall not be lacking at the altar of Serapis.  It is poured out on the earth by the priests as a drink-offering.”

Publius had listened attentively, and had not lost a word of his friend’s narrative.  He now quitted him hastily, opened the tent-door, and went out into the night, looking up to discover the hour from the stars which were silently pursuing their everlasting courses in countless thousands, and sparkling with extraordinary brilliancy in the deep blue sky.  The moon was already set, and the morning-star was slowly rising—­every night since the Roman had been in the land of the Pyramids he had admired its magnificent size and brightness.

A cold breeze fanned the young man’s brow, and as he drew his robe across his breast with a shiver, he thought of the sisters, who, before long, would have to go out in the fresh morning air.  Once more he raised his eyes from the earth to the firmament over his head, and it seemed to him that he saw before his very eyes the proud form of Klea, enveloped in a mantle sown over with stars.  His heart throbbed high, and he felt as if the breeze that his heaving breast inhaled in deep breaths was as fresh and pure as the ether that floats over Elysium, and of a strange potency withal, as if too rare to breathe.  Still he fancied he saw before him the image of Klea, but as he stretched out his hand towards the beautiful vision it vanished—­a sound of hoofs and wheels fell upon his ear.  Publius was not accustomed to abandon himself to dreaming when action was needed, and this reminded him of the purpose for which he had come out into the open air.  Chariot after chariot came driving past as he returned into his tent.  Lysias, who during his absence had been pacing up and down and reflecting, met him with the question: 

“How long is it yet till sunrise?”

Hardly two hours,” replied the Roman.  “And we must make good use of them if we would not arrive too late.”

“So I think too,” said the Corinthian.  “The sisters will soon be at the Well of the Sun outside the temple walls, and I will persuade Irene to follow me.  You think I shall not be successful?  Nor do I myself—­but still perhaps she will if I promise to show her something very pretty, and if she does not suspect that she is to be parted from her sister, for she is like a child.”