The beggar went off, shrieking and shouting, to his brother’s house to tell the mistress that lame Martha, who had nursed her daughter to death, was slain; but he gained an evil reward, for the poor woman bewailed Selene as if she had been her own child, and cursed him and her murderers.

Before sundown Hadrian arrived at Besa, where he found magnificent tents pitched to receive him and his escort.  The disaster that had befallen his statue was kept a secret from him, but he felt anxious and ill.  He wished to be perfectly alone, and desired Antinous to go to see the city before it should be dark.  The Bithynian joyfully embraced this permission as a gift of the gods; he hurried through the decorated high streets, and made a boy guide him from thence into the Christian quarter.  Here the streets were like a city of the dead; not a door was open, not a man to be seen.

Antinous paid the lad, sent him away, and with a beating heart went from one house to another.  Each looked neat and clean, and was surrounded by trees and shrubs, but though the smoke curled up from several of the roofs every house seemed to have been deserted.  At last he heard the sound of voices.  Guided by these he went through a lane to an open place where hundreds of people, men, women and children, were assembled in front of a small building which stood in the midst of a palm grove.

He asked where dame Hannah lived, and an old man silently pointed to the little house on which the attention of the Christians seemed to be concentrated.  The lad’s heart throbbed wildly and yet he felt anxious and embarrassed, and he asked himself whether he had not better turn back and return next morning when he might hope to find Selene alone.

But no!  Perhaps he might even now be allowed to see her.

He modestly made his way through the throng, which had set up a song in which he could not determine whether it was intended to express feelings of sadness or of triumph.  Now he was standing at the gate of the garden and saw Mary the deformed girl.  She was kneeling by a covered bier and weeping bitterly.  Was dame Hannah dead?  No, she was alive, for at this moment she came out of her house, leaning on an old man, pale, calm and tearless.  Both came forward, the old man uttered a short prayer and then stooping down, lifted the sheet which covered the dead.

Antinous pushed a step forward but instantly drew two steps back—­then covering his eyes with his hand he stood as if rooted to the spot.

There was no vehement lamentation.  The old man began a discourse.  All around were sounds of suppressed weeping, singing and praying but Antinous saw and heard nothing.  He had dropped his hand and never took his eyes off the white face of the dead till Hannah once more covered it with the sheet.  Even then he did not stir.

It was not till six young girls lifted Selene’s modest bier and four matrons took up that of little Helios on their shoulders and the whole assembly moved away after them, that he too turned and followed the mourning procession.  He looked on from a distance while the larger and the smaller coffins were carried into a rocktomb, while the entrance was carefully closed, and the procession dispersed some here and some there.