And, as the tender-hearted Heliodora’s fresh lips rested on the plague-tainted hair, Katharina closed her eyes and felt as a gladiator might who hitherto has only tried his weapons on the practising ground, and now for the first time uses them in the arena to pierce his opponent’s heart.  She had a vision of herself as some one else, taller and stronger than she was; aye, as Death itself, the destroyer, breathing herself into her victim’s breast.

These feelings entirely possessed her as she knelt on the soft carpet, and she did not notice that another woman was crossing it noiselessly to her comforter’s bed-side, with a glance of intelligence at Heliodora.  Just as she exclaimed:  “Another kiss there-it burns so dreadfully,” she felt two hands on her temples and two lips, not Heliodora’s, were pressed on her head.

She looked up in astonishment and saw the smiling face of her mother, who had come after her to ask how the bishop was, and who wished to take her share in soothing the pain of her darling.

How well her little surprise had succeeded!

But what came over the child?  She started to her feet as if lightning had struck her, as if an asp had stung her, looked horror-stricken into her mother’s eyes, and then, as Susannah was on the point of clasping the little head to her bosom once more to kiss the aching, the cursed spot, Katharina pushed her away, flew, distracted, through the sitting-room into the vestibule, and down the narrow steps leading to the bathroom.

Her mother looked after her, shaking her head in bewilderment.  Then she turned to Heliodora with a shrug, and said, as the tears filled her eyes: 

“Poor, poor little thing!  Too many troubles have come upon her at once.  Her life till lately was like a long, sunny day, and now the hail is pelting her from all sides at once.  She has bad news of the bishop, I fear.”

“He is dying, she said,” replied the young widow with feeling.

“Our best and truest friend,” sobbed Susannah.  “It is, it really is too much.  I often think that I must myself succumb, and as for her—­ hardly more than a child!—­And with what resignation she bears the heaviest sorrows!—­You, Heliodora, are far from knowing what she has gone through; but you have no doubt seen how her only thought is to seem bright, so as to cheer my heart.  Not a sigh, not a complaint has passed her lips.  She submits like a saint to everything, without a murmur.  But, now that her clear old friend is stricken, she has lost her self-control for the first time.  She knows all that Plotinus has been to me.”  And she broke down into fresh sobbing.  When she was a little calmer, she apologised for her weakness and bid her fair guest good night.

Katharina, meanwhile, was taking a bath.

A bathroom was an indispensable adjunct to every wealthy Graeco-Egyptian house, and her father had taken particular pains with its construction.  It consisted of two chambers, one for men and one for women; both fitted with equal splendor.