you would do better to save, in order to search for
Sirona. I fancy she will have tried to reach the sea, and to get to
Egypt or possibly to Alexandria; and there--you know what the Greek city
is--she will fall into utter ruin."

"And so," laughed the Gaul, "find what she seeks--variety, and every
kind of pleasure. For a young thing like that, who loves amusement,
there is no pleasant occupation but vice. But I will spoil her game; you
are right, it is not well to give her too long a start. If she has found
the road to the sea, she may already--Hey, here Talib!" He beckoned to
Polykarp's Amalekite messenger. "You have just come from Raithu; did you
meet a flying woman on the way, with yellow hair and a white face?"

The Amalekite, a free man with sharp eyes, who was highly esteemed in
the senator's house, and even by Phoebicius himself, as a trustworthy
and steady man, had expected this question, and eagerly replied:

"At two stadia beyond el Heswe I met a large caravan from Petra, which
rested yesterday in the oasis here; a woman, such as you describe, was
running with it. When I heard what had happened here I wanted to speak,
but who listens to a cricket while it thunders?"

"Had she a lame greyhound with her?" asked Phoebicius, full of
expectation.

"She carried something in her arms," answered the Amalekite. "In the
moonlight I took it for a baby. My brother, who was escorting the
caravan, told me the lady was no doubt running away, for she had
paid the charge for the escort not in ready money, but with a gold
signet-ring."

The Gaul remembered a certain gold ring with a finely carved onyx, which
long years ago he had taken from Glycera's finger, for she had another
one like it, and which he had given to Sirona on the day of their
marriage.

"It is strange!" thought he, "what we give to women to bind them to us
they use as weapons to turn against us, be it to please some other
man, or to smooth the path by which they escape from us. It was with a
bracelet of Glycera's that I paid the captain of the ship that brought
us to Alexandria; but the soft-hearted fool, whose dove flew after me,
and I are men of a different stamp; I will follow my flown bird, and
catch it again." He spoke the last words aloud, and then desired one of
the senator's slaves to give his mule a good feed and drink, for his own
groom, and the superior decurion who during his absence must take his
place, were also worshippers of Mithras, and