It almost seemed as though fermenting wine flowed in the man’s veins instead of blood; for, when he had made his report to the Magian, and had been rewarded with a handful of gold-pieces, he tossed the coins in the air, caught them like flies in the hollow of his hand, and then pitched wheel fashion over head and heels from one end of the room to the other.  Then, when he stood on his feet once more, he went on, without a sign of breathlessness: 

“Forgive me, my lord!  Nature asserts her rights.  To play the pious for three whole hours!  Eternal gods, that is a hard task, and a man must—­”

“I know all about it,” Serapion broke in with a smile and a threatening finger.  “Now go and stretch your limbs, and then share your lightly earned gains with some pretty flute-player.  But I want you again this evening; so, if you feel weak, I shall lock you up.”

“Do,” said Castor, as earnestly as if he had been promised some pleasure.  “What a merry, good-for-nothing set they are!-Dorothea will bring the girl at the appointed hour.  Everything is arranged.”

Whereupon he danced out of the room, singing a tune.

“An invaluable creature!” said the Syrian, with an admiring glance.

“A better one spoiled,” said Serapion.  “He has the very highest gifts, but is utterly devoid of conscience to set a limit to his excesses.  How should he have one?  His father was one of a troupe of Ephesian pantomimists, and his mother a golden-haired Cyprian dancer.  But he knows every corner of Alexandria—­and then, what a memory!  What an actor he would have made!  Without even a change of dress, merely by a grimace, he at once becomes an old man, an idiot, or a philosopher.”

“And what a genius for intrigue!” Annianus went on enthusiastically.  “As soon as he saw the portrait of Korinna he knew that he had seen her double among the Christians on the other side of the lake.  This morning he tracked her out, and now she is caught in the snare.  And how sharp of him to make Dorothea bring her here!”

“I told him to do that, and use the name of Bishop Demetrius,” observed the Magian.  “She would not have come with a stranger, and Dorothea must be known to her in the meetings of their congregation.”

CHAPTER IX.

While this conversation was taking place, Melissa and her companion had reached the shore of the lake, the large inland sea which washed the southern side of the city and afforded anchorage for the Nile-boats.  The ferry-boat which would convey them to the gardens of Polybius started from the Agathodaemon Canal, an enlarged branch of the Nile, which connected the lake with the royal harbor and the Mediterranean; they had, therefore, to walk some distance along the shore.

The setting sun shot slanting rays on the glittering surface of the glassy waters in which the numberless masts of the Nile-boats were mirrored.