Heart to heart, mouth to mouth, they whispered.  To be more private, Basil drew her without the garden.  Veranilda’s eyes fixed themselves upon the spreading glory of the east; and it moved her to utterance.

‘When I was a child,’ she said, ’at Ravenna, I gazed once at the sunrise, and behold, in the rays which shot upwards stood an angel, a great, beautiful angel, with wings of blue, and a garment which shone like gold, and on his head was a wreath of I know not what flowers.  I ran to tell my mother, but when she came, alas! the angel had vanished.  No one could tell me certainly what the vision meant.  Often I have looked and hoped to see the angel again, but he has never come.’

Basil listened without a doubt, and murmured soft words.  Then he asked whether Aurelia knew of this meeting; but Veranilda shook her head.

’I durst not speak.  I so feared to disappoint you.  This night I have hardly slept, lest I should miss the moment.  Should I not return very soon, O Basil?’

’You shall; though your going will make the sky black as when Auster blows.  But it is not for long.  A few days—­’

He broke off with the little laugh of a triumphing lover.

‘A few days?’ responded Veranilda, timidly questioning.

‘We wait only until that dark ship has sailed for Rome.’  ’Does Aurelia know that you purpose it so soon?’ asked Veranilda.

‘Why?  Has she seemed to you to wish otherwise?’

’She has never spoken of it.—­And afterwards?  Shall we remain here, Basil?’

’For no long time.  Here I am but a guest.  We must dwell where I am lord and you lady of all about us.’

He told her of his possessions, of the great house in Rome with the villa at Arpinum.  Then he asked her, playfully, but with a serious purpose in his mind, which of the two she would prefer for an abode.

‘I have no choice but yours,’ she replied.  ’Where it seems good to my dear lord to dwell, there shall I be at rest.’

‘We must be safe against our enemies,’ said Basil, with graver countenance.

‘Our enemies?’

’Has not Aurelia talked to you of the war?  You know that the Gothic king is conquering all before him, coming from the north?’

Veranilda looked into her lover’s face with a tender anxiety.

‘And you fear him, O Basil?  It is he that is our enemy?’

’Not so, sweetest.  No foe of mine is he who wears the crown of Theodoric.  They whom I fear and abhor are the slaves of Justinian, the robber captains who rule at Ravenna and in Rome.’

As she heard him, Veranilda trembled with joy.  She caught his hand, and bent over it, and kissed it.

‘Had I been the enemy of Totila,’ said Basil, ’could you still have loved me as a wife should love?’

‘I had not asked myself,’ she answered, ’for it was needless.  When I look on you, I think neither of Roman nor of Goth.’