“Alas, gracious god! but thou art grave, as though the offering were too small.  How gladly would I bring a goat, but I know not whether my money will suffice, for it is only what I have saved.  By and by, when the youth I love is my husband, I will prove my gratitude; for he is as rich as he is handsome and kind, and will, I know, refuse me nothing.  And thou, sweet goddess, dost not look down upon me as graciously as before; I fear thou art angry.  Yet think not”—­and she gave a low laugh—­“that I pray for Caracalla because I care for him, or am in love with him.  No, no, no, no! my heart is wholly given to Diodoros, and not the smallest part of it to any other.  It is Caesar’s misery alone that brings me hither.  Sooner would I kiss one of those serpents or a thorny hedgehog than him, the fratricide in the purple.  Believe me, it is true, strange as it must seem.

“First and last, I pray and offer sacrifice indeed for Diodoros and his recovery.  My brother Alexander, too, who is in danger, I would fain commend to you; but he is well in body, and your remedies are of no effect against the perils which threaten him.”

Here she ceased, and gazed into the faces of the statues, but they would not look so friendly as before.  It was, no doubt, the smallness of her offering that had offended them.  She anxiously drew out her little money-bag and counted the contents.  But when, after waking the priest, she had asked how much a goat might cost for sacrifice, her countenance cleared, for her savings were enough to pay for it and for a young cock as well.  All she had she left with the old man, to the last sesterce; but she could only wait to see the cock sacrificed, for she felt she must go home.

As soon as the blood of the bird had besprinkled the altar, and she had told the divinities that a goat was also to be killed, she fancied that they looked at her more kindly; and she was turning to the door, as light and gay as if she had happily done some difficult task, when the curtain screening off the library of archives was lifted, and a man came out calling her by name.  She turned round; but as soon as she saw that he was a Roman, and, as his white toga told her, of the upper class, she took fright.  She hastily exclaimed that she was in a hurry, and flew down the steps, through the garden, and into the road.  Once there, she reproached herself for foolish shyness of a stranger who was scarcely younger than her own father; but by the time she had gone a few steps she had forgotten the incident, and was rehearsing in her mind all she had to tell Heron.  She soon saw the tops of the palms and sycamores in their own garden, her faithful old dog Melas barked with delight, and the happiness which the meeting with the stranger had for a moment interrupted revived with unchecked glow.