The sooner you can go the better, for it would be well that you should leave the path through the desert behind you before nightfall, for in the dark there are often dangerous tramps about.

You will find a friendly welcome at my sister Leukippa's; she lives in the toll-house by the great harbor--show her this ring and she will give you a bed, and, if the gods are merciful, one for Irene too." "Thank you, father," said Klea, but she said no more, and then left him with a rapid step.
Serapion looked lovingly after her; then he took two wooden tablets faced with wax out of his chest, and, with a metal style, he wrote on one a short letter to his brother, and on the other a longer one to the Roman, which ran as follows: "Serapion, the recluse of Serapis, to Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, the Roman.
"Serapion greets Publius Scipio, and acquaints him that Irene, the younger sister of Klea, the water-bearer, has disappeared from this temple, and, as Serapion suspects, by the wiles of the epistolographer Eulaeus, whom we both know, and who seems to have acted under the orders of King Ptolemy Euergetes.

Seek to discover where Irene can be.

Save her if thou canst from her ravishers, and conduct her back to this temple or deliver her in Memphis into the hands of my sister Leukippa, the wife of the overseer of the harbor, named Hipparchus, who dwells in the toll-house.

May Serapis preserve thee and thine." The recluse had just finished his letters when Klea returned to him.