as thought, the gladiator stood in their path—­and I swiftly recognised the nature of the ‘sport’ that had brought the Emperor and all this brave and glittering show of humanity out to watch what to them was merely a ’sensation’—­the life of a Christian dashed out by the claws and fangs of wild beasts—­a common pastime, all unchecked by either the mercy of man or the intervention of God!  I understood as clearly as if the explanation had been volunteered to me in so many words, that the woman who awaited her death so immovably had only one chance of rescue, and that chance was through the gladiator, who, to please the humour of the Emperor, had been brought hither to combat and frighten them off their intended victim,—­the reward for him, if he succeeded, being the woman herself.  I gazed with aching, straining eyes on the wonderful dream-spectacle, and my heart thrilled as I saw one of the lions stealthily approach the solitary martyr and prepare to spring.  Like lightning, the gladiator was upon the famished brute, fighting it back in a fierce and horrible contest, while the second lion, pouncing forward and bent on a similar attack, was similarly repulsed.  The battle between man and beasts was furious, prolonged and terrible to witness—­and the excitement became intense.  “Ad leones!  Ad leones!” was now the universal wild shout, rising ever louder and louder into an almost frantic clamour.  The woman meanwhile never stirred from her place—­she might have been frozen to the ground where she stood.  She appeared to notice neither the lions who were ready to devour her, nor the gladiator who combated them in her defence—­and I studied her strangely impassive figure with keen interest, waiting to see her face,—­for I instinctively felt I should recognise it.  Presently, as though in response to my thought, she turned towards me,—­and as in a mirror I saw my own reflected personality again as I had seen it so many times in this chain of strange episodes with which I was so singularly concerned though still an outside spectator.  Between her Shadow-figure and what I felt of my own existing Self there seemed to be a pale connecting line of light, and all my being thrilled towards her with a curiously vague anxiety.  A swirling mist came before my eyes suddenly,—­and when this cleared I saw that the combat was over—­the lions lay dead and weltering in their blood on the trampled sand of the arena, and the victorious gladiator stood near their prone bodies triumphant, amid the deafening cheers of the crowd.  Wreaths of flowers were tossed to him from the people, who stood up in their seats all round the great circle to hail him with their acclamations, and the Emperor, lifting his unwieldy body from under his canopy of gold, stretched out his hand as a sign that the prize which the dauntless combatant had fought to win was his.  He at once obeyed the signal;—­but now the woman, hitherto so passive and immovable, stirred.  Fixing upon the gladiator a glance of the deepest reproach and anguish, she raised her arms warningly as though forbidding him to approach her—­and then fell face forward on the ground.  He rushed to her side, and kneeling down sought to lift her;—­then suddenly he sprang erect with a loud cry:—­