“The fate of the old gods is sealed.  We are the stronger and to-morrow, yes to-morrow—­by your own head, by all I hold dear and sacred!—­Serapis will fall!”

“I know it,” she said firmly.  “And you are charged to lay hands on the god?”

“I am, and I shall do it.”

She nodded approbation and then said submissively and sweetly:  “It is your duty, and you cannot do otherwise.  And come what may we are one, Constantine, forever one.  Nothing can part us.  Whatever the future may bring, we belong to each other, to stand or fall together.  I with you, you with me, till the end of time.”  She gave him her hand and looked lovingly into his eyes; then she threw herself into his mother’s arms and kissed her fondly.

“Come, come with me, my child,” said Marianne; but Gorgo freed herself, exclaiming:  “Go, go; if you love me leave me; go and let me be alone.”

She went back into the thalamos where the dead lay at peace, and before the others could follow her she had opened a door hidden behind some tapestry near the bed, and fled into the garden.

CHAPTER XXI.

The night was hot and gloomy.  Heavy clouds gathered in the north, and wreaths of mist, like a hot vapor-bath, swayed over the crisply-foaming wavelets that curled the lustreless waters of the Mareotis Lake.  The moon peeped, pale and shrouded, out of a russet halo, and ghostly twilight reigned in the streets, still heated by the baked walls of the houses.

To the west, over the desert, a dull sulphurous yellow streaked the black clouds, and from time to time the sultry air was rent by a blinding flash sent across the firmament from the north.  There was a hot, sluggish wind blowing from the southwest, which drove the sand across the lake into the streets; the fine grit stung:  and burnt the face of the wanderer who hurried on with half-closed eyes and tightly-shut lips.  A deep oppression seemed to have fallen on nature and on man; the sudden gusts of the heated breeze, the arrow-like shafts of lightning, the weird shapes and colors of the clouds, all combined to give a sinister, baleful and portentous aspect to this night, as though skies and waters, earth and air were brooding over some tremendous catastrophe.

Gorgo had thrown a veil and handkerchief round her head and followed the priest with an aching brow and throbbing heart.  When she heard a step behind her she started-for it might be Constantine following her up; when a gust of wind flung the stinging sand in her face, or the storm-flash threw a lurid light on the sky, her heart stood still, for was not this the prelude to the final crash.

She was familiar with the way they were going, but its length seemed to have stretched tenfold.  At last, however, they reached their destination.  She gave the pass-word at the gate of her father’s timber-yard and exchanged the signs agreed upon; in a few minutes she had made her way through the piles of beams and planks that screened the entrance to the aqueduct—­a slave who knew her leading the way with a light—­and she and her companion entered the underground passage.