“You are here at a late hour, and it is well that you have come.”

“You sent for me,” replied the Roman.

“It was another that did that, not I,” replied Klea in a slow dull tone, as if she were lifting a heavy weight, and could hardly draw her breath.  “Now—­follow me, for this is not the place to explain everything in.”

With these words Klea went towards the locked door of the Apis-tombs, and tried, as she stood in front of it, to insert into the lock the key that Krates had given her; but the lock was still so new, and her fingers shook so much, that she could not immediately succeed.  Publius meanwhile was standing close by her side, and as he tried to help her his fingers touched hers.

And when he—­certainly not by mistake—­laid his strong and yet trembling hand on hers, she let it stay for a moment, for she felt as if a tide of warm mist rose up in her bosom dimming her perceptions, and paralyzing her will and blurring her sight.

“Klea,” he repeated, and he tried to take her left hand in his own; but she, like a person suddenly aroused to consciousness after a short dream, immediately withdrew the hand on which his was resting, put the key into the lock, opened the door, and exclaimed in a voice of almost stern command, “Go in first.”

Publius obeyed and entered the spacious antechamber of the venerable cave, hewn out of the rock and now dimly lighted.  A curved passage of which he could not see the end lay before him, and on both sides, to the right and left of him, opened out the chambers in which stood the sarcophagi of the deceased sacred bulls.  Over each of the enormous stone coffins a lamp burnt day and night, and wherever a vault stood open their glimmer fell across the deep gloom of the cave, throwing a bright beam of light on the dusky path that led into the heart of the rock, like a carpet woven of rays of light.

What place was this that Klea had chosen to speak with him in.

But though her voice sounded firm, she herself was not cool and insensible as Orcus—­which this place, which was filled with the fumes of incense and weighed upon his senses, much resembled—­for he had felt her fingers tremble under his, and when he went up to her, to help her, her heart beat no less violently and rapidly than his own.  Ah! the man who should succeed in touching that heart of hard, but pure and precious crystal would indeed enjoy a glorious draught of the most perfect bliss.

“This is our destination,” said Klea; and then she went on in short broken sentences.  “Remain where you are.  Leave me this place near the door.  Now, answer me first one question.  My sister Irene has vanished from the temple.  Did you cause her to be carried off?”

“I did,” replied Publius eagerly.  “She desired me to greet you from her, and to tell you how much she likes her new friends.  When I shall have told you—­”