one darling.  But Gorgo had remained by her side, and, while she did everything in her power to revive the stiffening body, the overwhelming might of Death had come home to her with appalling clearness.  She felt the limbs of one she had loved growing cold and rigid under her hands, and her spirit rose in obstinate rebellion against the idea that annihilation stood between her and the woman who had so amply filled a mother’s place.  She insisted on having every method of resuscitation tried that had ever been heard of, and made her nurse send for physicians, though the woman solemnly assured her that human help was of no avail:  then she sent for the priest of Saturn who—­as the dead woman herself had told her—­knew mighty spells which had called back many a departed spirit to the body it had quitted.

When, at last, she was alone and gazed on the hard, set features of the dead, though she shuddered with horror, she so far controlled herself as to press her lips in sorrow and gratitude to the thin hand whose caresses she had been wont to accept as a mere matter of course.  How cold and heavy it was!  She shivered and dropped it, and the large rings on the fingers rattled on the wooden frame of the couch.  There was no hope; she understood that her friend and mother was indeed dead and silent forever.

Deep and bitter grief overwhelmed her completely, with the sense of abandoned loneliness, the humiliating feeling of helplessness against a brutal power that marches on, scorning humanity, as a warrior treads down the grass and flowers in his path.  She fell on her knees by the corpse, sobbing passionately, and crying like an indignant child when a stronger companion has robbed it of some precious possession.  She wept with rage at her own impotence; and her tears flowed faster and faster as she more fully realized how lonely she was, and what a blow this must be to her father.  In this hour no pleasant reminiscences of past family happiness came to infuse a drop of sweetness into the bitterness of her grief.  Only one reflection brought her any comfort, and that was the thought that the grave which had yawned already for her grandmother would soon, very soon, open for herself and all living souls.  On the table, close at hand, lay the evidence of their impending doom, and a longing for that end gradually took complete possession of her, excluding every other feeling.  Thinking of this she rose from her knees and ceased to weep.

When, presently, her waiting-woman should return, she was resolved to leave the house at once; she could not bear to stay; her feelings and duty alike indicated the place where she might find the last hour’s happiness that she expected or desired of life.  Her father must learn from herself, and not from a stranger, of the loss that had befallen them, and she knew that he was in the Serapeum—­on the very spot where she might hope next morning to meet Constantine.  It would be her lover’s duty to open the gate to destruction, and she would be there to pass through it at his side.