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If I was brave enough, I would kill myself, and go to sleep and forget it all. But I am weak and cowardly, and so here I am." Pisander only groaned and went away to his room to turn over his Aristotle, and wonder why nothing in the "Nicomachean Ethics" or any other learned treatise contained the least word that made him contented over the fate of Agias or his own unhappy situation.

Again the gladiators recoiled, and before they could return to the charge, back into the peristylium rushed Drusus, escaped from Cappadox, with that worthy and Mago and Agias, just released, at his heels. "Here's your man!" cried Gabinius, who still kept discreetly in the rear.

Agias accordingly fared away, much to Cornelia's regret; but not quite so much to his own, because his enforced journeying would take him to the Nile villa, where was the pretty Artemisia. Early on the following day Cornelia boldly went to Pothinus, and, without any explanations, demanded to see her uncle.

Artemisia, who was charmed with her present surroundings and adulation, demurred at leaving her entertainers; but Agias was imperative, and the others realized well enough that there was not much time to be lost. Agias, however, waited until it had become tolerably dark before starting.

But the worthy pirate had not an objection to make; on the contrary, he would sit for hours staring at Artemisia, and when Agias demanded if he was about to turn rival, shook his head and replied, rather brusquely: "I was only thinking that Daphne might be about her age, and look perhaps like her."

Pratinas, in fact, Agias learned for her, was never weary ridiculing the Roman oligarchs, and professing his disgust with them; so Cornelia no longer had immediate cause to fear him, though she hated him none the less. After all, Pratinas thrust himself little upon her. He had his own life to live, and it ran far apart from hers.

"Ai!" exclaimed Artemisia, drawing back, "who are you? You're dreadfully rude. I never saw you before." "Nor I you;" replied Agias, in capital good humour, "but that is no reason why I should take my eyes away from your pretty little face. No, you needn't point your middle finger at me so, to ward off the evil eye. I'm neither Chaldean astrologer, nor Etruscan soothsayer.

The narrow, easy-moving yacht caught the current; a long tier of white oars glinted in the torchlight, smote the water, and the yacht bounded away, while a parting flight of arrows left misery and death upon the quay. Agias, sorely bewildered, clambered on to the little poop.

A few days later Cornelia and Fabia found themselves received as members of the household of no less a person than Cleomenes, a distant kinsman of Demetrius and Agias, and himself one of the great merchant princes of the Egyptian capital. The Roman ladies found a certain amount of shyness to overcome on their own part and on that of their hosts.

Agias found himself before a tribunal composed of Falto, the subordinate villicus, as chief judge, and two or three freedmen to act in capacity of assessors. All of this bench were hard, grey-headed, weazened agriculturists, who looked with no very lenient eye upon the delicate and handsome young prisoner before them.