“Show me,” replied Philippus in a dull voice.  “I ask no more.  Do you suppose that I am not myself ashamed of my own weakness?  It ill beseems me of all men, formed by fate for anything rather than to be a sighing and rapturous lover.  I will struggle with it, wrestle with it with all the strength that is in me; but here, in Memphis, close to her and as her Kyrios, I should be forced every day to see her, and day after day be exposed to fresh and humiliating defeat!  Here, constantly near her and with her, the struggle must wear me out—­I should perish, body and soul.  The same place, the same city, cannot hold her and me.”

“Then she must make way for you,” croaked Horus.  Philippus raised his bowed head and asked, in some surprise and with stern reproof: 

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” replied the other airily.  He shrugged his shoulders and went on more gently:  “Memphis has greater need of you than of the patrician hussy.”  Then he shook himself as if he were cold, struck his breast and added:  “All is turmoil here within; I can neither help nor advise you.  Day must soon be dawning in the east; we will try to sleep.  A knot can often be untied by daylight which by lamplight seems inextricable, and perhaps on my sleepless couch the goddess may reveal to me the way I have promised to show you.  A little more lightness of heart would do neither of us any harm.—­Try to forget your own griefs in those of others; you see enough of them every day.  To wish you a good night would probably be waste of words, but I may wish you a soothing one, You may count on my aid; but you will not let me, a poor old man, hear another word about flight and departure and the like, will you?  No, no.  I know you better, Philippus—­you will never treat your lonely old friend so!”

These were the tenderest words that the leech had ever heard from the old man’s lips, and it comforted him when Horapollo pressed him to his heart in a hasty embrace.  He thought no more of the hint that it was Paula’s part to make room for him.  But the old man had spoken in all seriousness, for, no sooner was he alone than he petulantly flung down the ivory ruler on the table, and murmured, at first angrily and then scornfully, his eyes sparkling the while: 

“For this true heart, and to preserve myself and the world from losing such a man, I would send a dozen such born hussies to Amentis—­[The Nether world of the ancient Egyptians.]—­Hey, hey!  My beauty!  So this noble leech is not good enough for the like of us; he may be tossed away like a date-stone that we spit out?  Well, every one to his taste; but how would it be if old Horapollo taught us his value?  Wait a bit, wait!—­With a definite aim before my eyes I have never yet failed to find my way—­in the realm of science, of course; but what is life—­the life of the sage but applied knowledge?  And why should not old Horapollo, for once before he dies, try what his brains can contrive to achieve in the busy world of outside human existence?  Pleasant as you may think it to be in Memphis with your lover, fair heart-breaker, you will have to make way for the plaything you have so lightly tossed aside!  Aye, you certainly will, depend upon that my beauty, depend upon that!—­Here, Anubis!”