rene's tears the evening before,
and her cry of longing for happiness and freedom. Could it be that the
thoughtless child had yielded to this longing, and escaped without her
knowledge, though only for a few hours, to see the city and the gay life
there?

She collected herself so as not to betray her anxiety to the messenger,
and said with downcast eyes:

"I will go and look for her."

She hurried back into the house, once more looked to the sick child,
called his mother and showed her how to prepare the compresses, urging
her to follow Imhotep's directions carefully and exactly till she should
return; she pressed one loving kiss on little Philo's forehead--feeling
as she did so that he was less hot than he had been in the morning--and
then she left, going first to her own dwelling.

There everything stood or lay exactly as she had left it during the
night, only the golden jars were wanting. This increased Klea's alarm,
but the thought that Irene should have taken the precious vessels with
her, in order to sell them and to live on the proceeds, never once
entered her mind, for her sister, she knew, though heedless and easily
persuaded, was incapable of any base action.

Where was she to seek the lost girl? Serapion, the recluse, to whom she
first addressed herself, knew nothing of her.

On the altar of Serapis, whither she next went, she found both the
vessels, and carried them back to her room.

Perhaps Irene had gone to see old Krates, and while watching his work and
chattering to him, had forgotten the flight of time--but no, the
priest-smith, whom she sought in his workshop, knew nothing of the
vanished maiden. He would willingly have helped Klea to seek for his
favorite, but the new lock for the tombs of the Apis had to be finished
by mid-day, and his swollen feet were painful.

Klea stood outside the old man's door sunk in thought, and it occurred to
her that Irene had often, in her idle hours, climbed up into the dove-cot
belonging to the temple, to look out from thence over the distant
landscape, to visit the sitting birds, to stuff food into the gaping
beaks of the young ones, or to look up at the cloud of soaring doves. The
pigeon-house, built up of clay pots and Nile-mud, stood on the top of the
storehouse, which lay adjoining the southern boundary wall of the temple.

She hastened across the sunny courts and slightly shaded alleys, and
mounted to the flat roof of the storehouse, but she found there