He rose, went up to the window of Phoebicius dwelling, and listened at the half open shutters, but all was still.

An hour ago Miriam had been listening under Sirona’s room; after betraying her to Phoebicius she had followed him at a distance, and had slipped back into the court-yard through the stables; she felt that she must learn what was happening within, and what fate had befallen Hermas and Sirona at the hands of the infuriated Gaul.  She was prepared for anything, and the thought that the centurion might have killed them both with the sword filled her with bitter-sweet satisfaction.  Then, seeing the light through the crack between the partly open wooden shutters, she softly pushed them farther apart, and, resting her bare feet against the wall, she raised herself to look in.

She saw Sirona sitting up upon her couch, and opposite to her the Gaul with pale distorted features; at his feet lay the sheepskin; in his right hand he held the lamp, and its light fell on the paved floor in front of the bed, and was reflected in a large dark red pool.

“That is blood,” thought she, and she shuddered and closed her eyes.

When she reopened them she saw Sirona’s face with crimson cheeks, turned towards her husband; she was unhurt—­but Hermas?

“’That is his blood!” she thought with anguish, and a voice seemed to scream in her very heart, “I, his murderess, have shed it.”

Her hands lost their hold of the shutters, her feet touched the pavement of the yard, and, driven by her bitter anguish of soul, she fled out by the way she had come—­out into the open and up to the mountain.  She felt that rather would she defy the prowling panthers, the night-chill, hunger and thirst, than appear again before Dame Dorothea, the senator, and Marthana, with this guilt on her soul; and the flying Miriam was one of the goblin forms that had terrified Paulus.

The patient anchorite sat down again on the stone seat.  “The frost is really cruel,” thought he, “and a very good thing is such a woolly sheepskin; but the Saviour endured far other sufferings than these, and for what did I quit the world but to imitate Him, and to endure to the end here that I may win the joys of the other world.  There, where angels soar, man will need no wretched ram’s fell, and this time certainly selfishness has been far from me, for I really and truly suffer for another—­I am freezing for Hermas, and to spare the old man pain.  I would it were even colder!  Nay, I will never, absolutely never again lay a sheepskin over my shoulders.”

Paulus nodded his head as if to signify assent to his own resolve; but presently he looked graver, for again it seemed to him that he was walking in a wrong path.