From trifling details he had succeeded in forming a more accurate idea of Pulcheria than the leech himself had gained in years of intimacy.  Horapollo had foreseen, too, that the danger which threatened the Mukaukas’ son would fan Paula’s passions like a fresh breeze; and Joanna, frail, ailing Joanna! she had behaved heroically under the loss of the companion with whom she had lived for so many years in faithful love.  He could not help comparing her with the wretched Neforis; what was it that enabled one to bear the equal loss with so much more dignity than the other?  Nothing but the presence of the tender-hearted Pulcheria, who shared her sorrow with such beautiful resignation, such ready and complete sympathy.  This the governor’s widow had wholly lacked; and how happy were they who could call such a heart their own!  He walked through the garden with his head bent, and looking neither to the right hand nor the left.

The Masdakite, who was still sitting with Mandane under the sycamore, as indifferent to the torrid heat as she was, looked after him, and said with a sigh as he pointed to him: 

“There he goes.  This is the first time he ever said a rude word to you or to me:  or did you not understand?”

“Oh yes,” said she in a low voice, looking down at her needlework.

They talked in Persian, for she had not forgotten the language which her mother had spoken till her dying day.

Life is sometimes as strange as a fairy-tale; and the accident was indeed wonderful which had brought these two beings, of all others, at the same time to the sick room.  His distant home was also hers, and he even knew her uncle—­her father’s brother—­and her father’s sad history.

When the Greek army had taken possession of the province where they had lived, the men had fled into the woods with their flocks and herds, while the women and children took refuge in the fortress which defended the main road.  This had not long held out against the Byzantines, and the women, among them Mandane with her mother, had been handed over to the soldiers as precious booty.  Her father had then joined the troops to rescue the women, but he and his comrades had only lost their lives in the attempt.  To this day the valiant man’s end was a tale told in his native place, and his property and valuable rose gardens now belonged to his younger brother.  So the two convalescents had plenty to talk about.

It was curious to note how clearly the memories of her childhood were stamped on Mandane’s mind.

She had laid her wounded head on the pillow of sickness with a darkened brain, and the new pain had lifted the veil from her mind as a storm clears the oppressive atmosphere of a sultry summer’s day.  She loved to linger now among the scenes of her childhood—­the time when she had a mother.—­Or she would talk of the present; all between was like a night-sky black, and only lighted up by an awful comet and shining