“And the enemy will perish in the same ruin!” continued Damia, her eyes sparkling with revived fire.  “But where shall we go to—­where?  The soul is divine by nature and cannot be destroyed.  It must return—­say, am I right or wrong?—­It will return to its first fount and cause; for like attracts and absorbs like, and thus our deification, our union with the god will be accomplished.”

“I believe it—­I am sure of it!” replied Gorgo with conviction.

“You are sure of it?” retorted the old woman.  “But I am not.  For our clearest knowledge is but guesswork when it is not based on numbers.  Nothing is proved or provable but by numbers, but they are surer than the rocks in the sea; that is why I believe in our coming doom, for, on those tablets, we have calculated it to a certainty.  But who can calculate evidence of the future fate of the soul?  If, indeed, the old order should not pass away—­if the depths should remain below and the empyrean still keep its place above—­then, to be sure, your studies would not be in vain; for then your soul, which is fixed on spiritual, supernatural and sublime conceptions, would be drawn upwards to the great Intelligence of which it is the offspring, to the very god, and become one with him—­ absorbed into him, as the rain-drop fallen from a cloud rises again and is reunited to its parent vapor.  Then—­for there may be a metempsychosis—­your songful spirit might revive to inform a nightingale, then . . .”

Damia paused; and gazed upwards as if in ecstasy, and it was not till a few minutes later that she went on, with a changed expression in her face:  “Then my son’s widow, Mary, would be hatched out of a serpent’s egg and would creep a writhing asp...  Great gods! the ravens!  What can they mean?  They come again.  Air, air!  Wine!  I cannot—­I am choking—­take it away!—­To-morrow—­to-day...  Everything is going; do you see—­do you feel?  It is all black—­no, red; and now black again.  Everything is sinking; hold me, save me; the floor is going from under me.—­Where is Porphyrius?  Where is my son?—­My feet are so cold; rub them.  It is the water! rising—­it is up to my knees.  I am sinking—­help! save me! help!” The dying woman fought with her arms as if she were drowning; her cries for help grew fainter, her head drooped on her laboring chest, and in a few minutes she had breathed her last in her grandchild’s arms, and her restless, suffering soul was free.

Never before had Gorgo seen death.  She could not persuade herself that the heart which had been so cold for others, but had throbbed so warmly and tenderly for her, was now stilled for ever; that the spirit which, even in sleep, had never been at rest, had now found eternal peace.  The slave-woman had hastily taken her place, had closed the dead woman’s eyes and mouth, and done all she could to diminish the horror of the scene, and the terrible aspect of the dead in the sight of the girl who had been her