must, of course, be glad to be able to assist those friends, of all others; and Nilus, who was respectfully devoted to her, had greeted her from Orion with peculiar warmth.  He would come to-morrow, no doubt; and the oftener she repeated to herself his assertion that he had never betrayed affectionate trust, the more earnestly she felt prompted, in spite of the abbess’ counsel, to abandon all hesitancy, to follow the impulse of her heart, and to be his at once in full and happy confidence.

The waning moon had not yet risen, and the night was very dark when the nuns set forth.  The boat was too large to come close to the shore in the present low state of the river, and the sisters, disguised as peasant-women, had to be carried on board one by one from the convent garden.  Last of all the abbess was to be lifted over the shallow water, and the old ship-builder held himself in readiness to perform this service.  Joanna, Pulcheria, Perpetua, and Eudoxia, who was also zealously orthodox, were standing round as she gave Paula a parting kiss and whispered:  “God bless thee, child!—­All now depends on you, and you must be doubly careful to abide by your promise.”

“I owe him, in the first place, friendly trust,” was Paula’s whispered reply, and the abbess answered:  “But you owe yourself firmness and caution.”  Rufinus was the last; his wife and daughter clung around him still.

“Take example from that poor girl,” cried the old man, clasping his wife in his arms.  “As sure as man is the standard of all things, all must go well with me this time if everlasting Love is not napping.  Till we meet again, best of good women!—­And, if ill befalls your stupid old husband, always remember that he brought it upon himself in trying to save a quarter of a hundred innocent women from the worst misfortunes.  At any rate I shall fall on the road I myself have chosen.—­But why has Philippus not come to take leave of me?”

Dame Joanna burst into tears:  “That-that is so hard too!  What has come over him that he has deserted us, and just now of all times?  Ah, husband!  If you love me, take Gibbus with you on the voyage.”

“Yes, master, take me,” the hunchbacked gardener interposed.  “The Nile will be rising again by the time we come back, and till then the flowers can die without my help.  I dreamt last night that you picked a rose from the middle of my Bump.  It stuck up there like the knob on the lid of a pot.  There is some meaning in it and, if you leave me at home, what is the good of the rose—­that is to say what good will you get out of me?”

“Well then, carry your strange flower-bed on board,” said the old man laughing.  “Now, are you satisfied Joanna?”

Once more he embraced her and Pulcheria and, as a tear from his wife’s eyes dropped on his hand, he whispered in her ear:  “You have been the rose of my life; and without you Eden—­Paradise itself can have no joys.”

The boat pushed out into the middle of the stream and was soon hidden by the darkness from the eyes of the women on the bank.