the barriers of sex, the sacrifice of self, the performance of duty, the choice of courage?  The feverish talk of women about their independence had failed to hold her attention.  Now a mightier voice, borne from the graves of the dead, trumpeted from the lives of the living, called to her, above the warring of her will with sorrow, to be a Roman citizen.  She had neither arms nor counsels to give to her country.  She could not even give sons born of her body, taught of her spirit.  She was a woman alone, she was growing old, she was ungifted.  She would be nothing but a private in the ranks, an obscure workman among master builders.  But she could offer her victory over herself, and ask her country to take back and use a character hewn and shaped in accordance with its traditions.  Her husband’s citizenship had become a legal fable.  She would take it and weld it with her own, and, content never to know the outcome, lay them both together upon the altar of Rome’s immortal Spirit.

The new moon hung in the still radiant west.  On a moonlit night she had fallen by the ashes of her hearth and prayed in futile agony to the gods of her home.  Now she stood erect and looked out upon the city and with a solemn faith prayed to the greater gods.  Later she slept peacefully, for the first time in fifteen months, as one whose taskmaster has turned comrade.

In the morning her uncle, who had been in Falerii for a few weeks, came to see her.  He looked keenly into her eyes as she hastened across the wide room to greet him.  Then his own eyes flashed and with a sudden glad movement he bent and kissed her hands.  “Heart of my heart,” he said, “in an exile’s house I salute a Roman.”

FORTUNE’S LEDGER

I

His Lady of Gifts smiled at him and held out her hand with something shut tight inside of it.  The white fingers were just about to open into his palm, when he felt his mother’s hand on his and heard her say:  “Come, Marcus, come, the sun will get ahead of you this morning.”  He knew that she had kissed his eyes and hurried away again before he could open them upon the faint, grey light in his tiny room.  A piercing thought put an end to sleepiness and brought him swiftly from his bed.  This was the day of his Lady’s festival!  His mother seemed to have forgotten it, but he could say a prayer for her as well as for himself at the shrine by the Spring.  He must make haste now, however, for before the June sun should fairly have come up over the tops of the hills he must get his sheep and goats to their pasture on the lower slopes.