In a few minutes the two young men were sitting opposite each other at the table which stood in the middle of their tent.  Publius wrote busily, and only looked up when his friend, who was reading the anchorite’s document, struck his hand on the table in disgust or sprang from his seat ejaculating bitter words of indignation.  Both had finished at the same moment, and when Publius had folded and sealed his letter, and Lysias had flung the roll on to the table, the Roman said slowly, as he looked his friend steadily in the face:  “Well?”

“Well!” repeated Lysias.  I now find myself in the humiliating position of being obliged to deem myself more stupid than you—­I must own you in the right, and beg your pardon for having thought you insolent and arrogant!  Never, no never did I hear a story so infernally scandalous as that in that roll, and such a thing could never have occurred but among these accursed Egyptians!  Poor little Irene!  And how can the dear little girl have kept such a sunny look through it all!  I could thrash myself like any school-boy to think that I—­a fool among fools—­should have directed the attention of Euergetes to this girl, and he, the most powerful and profligate man in the whole country.  What can now be done to save Irene from him?  I cannot endure the thought of seeing her abandoned to his clutches, and I will not permit it to happen.

“Do not you think that we ought to take the water-bearers under our charge?”

“Not only we ought but we must,” said Publius decisively; “and if we did not we should be contemptible wretches.  Since the recluse took me into his confidence I feel as if it were my, duty to watch over these girls whose parents have been stolen from them, as if I were their guardian—­and you, my Lysias, shall help me.  The elder sister is not now very friendly towards me, but I do not esteem her the less for that; the younger one seems less grave and reserved than Klea; I saw how she responded to your smile when the procession broke up.  Afterwards, you did not come home immediately any more than I did, and I suspect that it was Irene who detained you.  Be frank, I earnestly beseech you, and tell me all; for we must act in unison, and with thorough deliberation, if we hope to succeed in spoiling Euergetes’ game.”

“I have not much to tell you,” replied the Corinthian.  “After the procession I went to the Pastophorium—­naturally it was to see Irene, and in order not to fail in this I allowed the pilgrims to tell me what visions the god had sent them in their dreams, and what advice had been given them in the temple of Asclepius as to what to do for their own complaints, and those of their cousins, male and female.

“Quite half an hour had passed so before Irene came.  She carried a little basket in which lay the gold ornaments she had worn at the festival, and which she had to restore to the keeper of the temple-treasure.  My pomegranate-flower, which she had accepted in the morning, shone upon me from afar, and then, when she caught sight of me and blushed all over, casting down her eyes, then it was that it first struck me ’just like the Hebe on our cistern.’