“I will remember you for ever and ever, but you must not come to see me till I am once more united to my Klea.”

“But Irene, consider, if now—­” cried Lysias much agitated.

“You swore to me by the heads of your nearest kin to obey my wishes,” interrupted the girl.  “Certainly I trust you, and all the more readily because you are so good to me, but I shall not do so any more if you do not keep your word.  Look, here comes a lady to meet us who looks like a friend.  She is already waving her hand to me.  Yes, I will go with her gladly, and yet I am so anxious—­so troubled, I cannot tell you—­but I am so thankful too!  Think of me sometimes, Lysias, and of our journey here, and of our talk, and of my parents:  I entreat you, do for them all you possibly can.  I wish I could help crying—­but I cannot!”

CHAPTER XV.

Lysias eyes had not deceived him.  The chariot with white horses which he had evaded during his flight with Irene belonged to Eulaeus.  The morning being cool—­and also because Cleopatra’s lady-in-waiting was with him—­he had come out in a closed chariot, in which he sat on soft cushions side by side with the Macedonian lady, endeavoring to win her good graces by a conversation, witty enough in its way.

“On the way there,” thought he, “I will make her quite favorable to me, and on the way back I will talk to her of my own affairs.”

The drive passed quickly and pleasantly for both, and they neither of them paid any heed to the sound of the hoofs of the horses that were bearing away Irene.

Eulaeus dismounted behind the acacia-grove, and expressed a hope that Zoe would not find the time very long while he was engaged with the high-priest; perhaps indeed, he remarked, she might even make some use of the time by making advances to the representative of Hebe.

But Irene had been long since warmly welcomed in the house of Apollodorus, the sculptor, by the time they once more found themselves together in the chariot; Eulaeus feigning, and Zoe in reality feeling, extreme dissatisfaction at all that had taken place in the temple.  The high-priest had rejected Philometor’s demand that he should send the water-bearer to the palace on King Euergetes’ birthday, with a decisiveness which Eulaeus would never have given him credit for, for he had on former occasions shown a disposition to measures of compromise; while Zoe had not even seen the waterbearer.

“I fancy,” said the queen’s shrewd friend, “that I followed you somewhat too late, and that when I entered the temple about half an hour after you—­having been detained first by Imhotep, the old physician, and then by an assistant of Apollodorus, the sculptor, with some new busts of the philosophers—­the high-priest had already given orders that the girl should be kept concealed; for when I asked to see her, I was conducted first to her miserable room, which seemed more fit for peasants or goats than for a Hebe, even for a sham one—­but I found it perfectly deserted.