e a road for himself through life,
which had lain before him like an overgrown jungle of papyrus and reeds.
Every hour of his life was devoted to his work, for a rough, outspoken
Goliath, such as he, never could find it easy to meet with helpful
patrons. He had managed to live by teaching in the high schools of
Alexandria, Athens, and Caesarea, and by preparing medicines from choice
herbs--drinking water instead of wine, eating bread and fruit instead of
quails and pies; and he had made a friend of many a good man, but never
yet of a woman--it would be difficult with such a face as his!

"Then I am the first?" said Paula, who felt deep respect for the man who
had made his way by his own energy to the eminent position which he had
long held, not merely in Memphis, but among Egyptian physicians
generally.

He nodded, and with such a blissful smile that she felt as though a
sunbeam had shone into her very soul. He noticed this at once, raised his
goblet, and drank to her, exclaiming with a flush on his cheek:

"The joy that comes to others early has come to me late; but then the
woman I call my friend is matchless!"

"Well, it is to be hoped she may not prove to be so wicked as you just
now described her.--If only our alliance is not fated to end soon and
abruptly."

"Ah!" cried the physician, "every drop of blood in my veins. . . ."

"You would be ready to shed it for me," Paula broke in, with a pathetic
gesture, borrowed from a great tragedian she had seen at the theatre in
Damascus. "But never fear: it will not be a matter of life and death--at
worst they will but turn me out of the house and of Memphis."

"You?" cried Philippus startled, "but who would dare to do so?"

"They who still regard me as a stranger.--You described the case
admirably. If they have their way, my dear new friend, our fate will be
like that of the learned Dionysius of Cyrene."

"Of Cyrene?"

"Yes. It was my father who told me the story. When Dionysius sent his son
to the High School at Athens, he sat down to write a treatise for him on
all the things a student should do and avoid. He devoted himself to the
task with the utmost diligence; but when, at the end of four years, he
could write on the last leaf of the roll. 'Here this book hath a happy
ending,' the young man whose studies it was intended to guide came home
to Cyrene, a finished scholar."

"And we have struck up a friendship . . . ?"

"And made a treaty of alliance, only to