“That shall never, never be!—­And when I was sitting up there half-dead, and took your step for that of Phoebicius, the gods showed me a way to escape from him, and from you or anyone who would drag me back to him.  When I fled to the edge of the abyss, I was raving and crazed, but what I then would have done in my madness, I would do now in cold blood—­as surely as I hope to see my own people in Arelas once more!  What was I once, and to what have I come through Phoebicius!  Life was to me a sunny garden with golden trellises and shady trees and waters as bright as crystal, with rosy flowers and singing birds; and he, he has darkened its light, and fouled its springs, and broken down its flowers.  All now seems dumb and colorless, and if the abyss is my grave, no one will miss me nor mourn for me.”

“Poor woman!” said Paulus.  “Your husband then showed you very little love.”

“Love,” laughed Sirona, “Phoebicius and love!  Only yesterday I told you, how cruelly he used to torture me after his feasts, when he was drunk or when he recovered from one of his swoons.  But one thing he did to me, one thing which broke the last thread of a tie between us.  No one yet has ever heard a word of it from me; not even Dorothea, who often blamed me when I let slip a hard word against my husband.  It was well for her to talk—­if I had found a husband like Petrus I might perhaps have been like Dorothea.  It is a marvel, which I myself do not understand, that I did not grow wicked with such a man, a man who—­why should I conceal it—­who, when we were at Rome, because he was in debt, and because he hoped to get promotion through his legate Quintillus, sold me—­me—­to him.  He himself brought the old man—­who had often followed me about—­into his house, but our hostess, a good woman, had overheard the matter, and betrayed it all to me.  It is so base, so vile—­it seems to blacken my soul only to think of it!  The legate got little enough in return for his sesterces, but Phoebicius did not restore his wages of sin, and his rage against me knew no bounds when he was transferred to the oasis at the instigation of his betrayed chief.  Now you know all, and never advise me again to return to that man to whom my misfortune has bound me.

“Only listen how the poor little beast in there is whining.  It wants to come to me, and has not the strength to move.”

Paulus looked after her sympathetically as she disappeared under the opening in the rock, and he awaited her return with folded arms.  He could not see into the cave, for the space in which the bed stood was closed at the end by the narrow passage which formed the entrance, and which joined it at an angle as the handle of a scythe joins the blade.  She remained a long time, and he could hear now and then a tender word with which she tried to comfort the suffering creature.  Suddenly he was startled by a loud and bitter cry from Sirona; no doubt, the poor woman’s affectionate little companion was dead, and in the dim twilight of the cave she had seen its dulled eye, and felt the stiffness of death overspreading and paralyzing its slender limbs.  He dared not go into the cavern, but he felt his eyes fill with tears, and he would willingly have spoken some word of consolation to her.