Or had some demon robbed him of his hearing?
He could hear the rush of his own swift pulses in his ears-not the faintest sound besides.
Such silence is there nowhere but in the city of the dead and at night, nowhere but in the desert.
He tied the mule's bridle to a stela of granite covered with inscriptions, and went forward to the appointed place.

Midnight must be past--that he saw by the position of the moon, and he was beginning to ask himself whether he should remain standing where he was or go on to meet the water-bearer when he heard first a light footstep, and then saw a tall erect figure wrapped in a long mantle advancing straight towards him along the avenue of sphinxes.

Was it a man or a woman--was it she whom he expected?
and if it were she, was there ever a woman who had come to meet a lover at an assignation with so measured, nay so solemn, a step?
Now he recognized her face--was it the pale moonlight that made it look so bloodless and marble-white?
There was something rigid in her features, and yet they had never--not even when she blushingly accepted his violets--looked to him so faultlessly beautiful, so regular and so nobly cut, so dignified, nay impressive.
For fully a minute the two stood face to face, speechless and yet quite near to each other.

Then Publius broke the silence, uttering with the warmest feeling and yet with anxiety in his deep, pure voice, only one single word; and the word was her name "Klea." The music of this single word stirred the girl's heart like a message and blessing from heaven, like the sweetest harmony of the siren's song, like the word of acquittal from a judge's lips when the verdict is life or death, and her lips were already parted to say 'Publius' in a tone no less deep and heartfelt-but, with all the force of her soul, she restrained herself, and said softly and quickly: "You are here at a late hour, and it is well that you have come." "You sent for me," replied the Roman.
"It was another that did that, not I," replied Klea in a slow dull tone, as if she were lifting a heavy weight, and could hardly draw her breath.
"Now--follow me, for this is not the place to explain everything in." With these words Klea went towards the locked door of the Apis-tombs, and tried, as she stood in front of it, to insert into the lock the key that Krates had given her; but the lock was still so new, and her fingers shook so much, that she could not immediately succeed.

Publius meanwhile was standing close by her side, and as he tried to help her his fingers touched hers.
And when he--certainly not by mistake--laid his strong and yet trembling hand on hers, she let it stay for a moment, for she felt as if a tide of warm mist rose up in her bosom dimming her perceptions, and paralyzing her will and blurring her sight.
"Klea," he repeated, and he tried to take her left hand in his own; but she, like a person suddenly aroused to consciousness after a short dream, immediately withdrew the hand on which his was resting, put the key into the lock, opened the door, and exclaimed in a voice of almost stern command, "Go in first." Publius obeyed and entered the spacious antechamber of the venerable cave, hewn out of the rock and now dimly lighted.