“Man, man!  Where will this new passion lead you?  The horses are stamping impatiently outside; duty summons the most faithful of men, and he stands like a prophet, indulging in mysterious sayings!”

“Whose meaning and purport, spite of your calm calculations of existing circumstances, will soon seem no less wonderful to you than to me, whose unruly artist nature, according to your opinion, is playing me a trick,” retorted the architect.  “Now listen to this explanation:  Didymus’s house will be occupied at once by my workmen, but I shall examine the lower rooms of the Temple of Isis.  I have with me a document requiring obedience to my orders.  Cleopatra herself laid the plans before me, even the secret portion showing the course of the subterranean chambers.  It will cast some light upon my mysterious sayings if I bear you away from the enemy through one of the secret corridors.  They were right in concealing from you by how slender a thread, spite of the power of your example in mathematics, the sword hangs above your head.  Now that I see a possibility of removing it, I can show it to you.  Tomorrow you would have fallen, without hope of rescue, into the hands of cruel foes and been shamefully abandoned by your own weak uncle, had not the most implacable of all your enemies permitted himself the infamous pleasure of laying hands on an old man’s house, and the Queen, in consequence of an agitating message, had the idea suggested of building her own mausoleum.  The corridor”—­here he lowered his voice—­“of which I spoke leads to the sea at a spot close beside Didymus’s garden, and through it I will guide you, and, if possible, Barine also, to the shore.  This could be accomplished in the usual way only by the greatest risk.  If we use the passage we can reach a dark place on the strand unseen, and unless some special misfortune pursues us our flight will be unnoticed.  The litters and your tottering gait would betray everything if we were to enter the boat anywhere else in the great harbour.”

“And we, sensible folk, refuse to believe in miracles!” cried Dion, holding out his wan hand to the architect.  “How shall I thank you, you dear, clever, most loyal of friends to your male friends, though your heart is so faithless to fair ones?  Add that malicious speech to the former ones, for which I now crave your pardon.  What you intend to accomplish for Barine and me gives you a right to do and say to me whatever ill you choose all the rest of my life.  Anxiety for her would surely have bound me to this house and the city when the time came to make the escape, for without her my life would now be valueless.  But when I think that she might follow me to Pyrrhus’s cliff—­”