“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.

It was hot and close; bats, scared by the flare of the torch, fluttered round her with a ghostly rustle, startling and disgusting her; still, she felt less alarm here than outside; and when, as she went forward she thought of the great temple she was coming to, of its wonderful beauty and solemn majesty, she only cared to press onward to that refuge of ineffable splendor where all would be peace.  To die there, to perish there with her lover, did not seem hard; nay, she felt proud to think that she might await death in the noblest edifice ever raised to a god by mortal hands.  Here Fate might have its way; she had known the highest joy she had ever dreamed of, and where on earth was there a sublimer tomb than this sanctuary of the sovereign of the universe, whose supremacy even the other gods acknowledged with trembling!