the emperor, 'Here am I, and I will fight for you among your
warriors.'"

"I like you so!" exclaimed Sirona.

"If that is the truth," cried Hermas, "prove it to me! Let me once press
my lips to your shining gold hair. You are beautiful, as sweet as a
flower--as gay and bright as a bird, and yet as hard as our mountain
rock. If you do not grant me one kiss, I shall long till I am sick and
weak before I can get away from here, and prove my strength in battle."

"And if I yield," laughed Sirona, "you will be wanting another and
another kiss, and at last not get away at all. No, no, my friend--I am
the wiser of us two. Now go into the dark room, I will look out and see
whether the people are gone in again, and whether you can get off unseen
from the street window, for you have been here much too long already. Do
you hear? I command you."

Hermas obeyed with a sigh; Sirona opened the shutter and looked out. The
slaves were coming back into the court, and she called out a friendly
word or two, which were answered with equal friendliness, for the Gaulish
lady, who never overlooked even the humblest, was dear to them all. She
took in the night-air with deep-drawn breaths, and looked up contentedly
at the moon, for she was well content with herself.

When Hermas had swung himself up into her room, she had started back in
alarm; he had seized her hand and pressed his burning lips to her arm,
and she let him do it, for she was overcome with strange bewilderment.

Then she heard Dame Dorothea calling out, "Directly, directly, I will
only say good night first to the children." These simple words, uttered
in Dorothea's voice, had a magical effect on the warm-hearted
woman--badly used and suspected as she was, and yet so well formed for
happiness, love and peace. When her husband had locked her in, taking
even her slave with him, at first she had raved, wept, meditated revenge
and flight, and at last, quite broken down, had seated herself by the
window in silent thought of her beautiful home, her brothers and sisters,
and the dark olive groves of Arelas.

Then Hermas appeared. It had not escaped her that the young anchorite
passionately admired her, and she was not displeased, for she liked him,
and the confusion with which he had been overcome at the sight of her
flattered her and seemed to her doubly precious because she knew that the
hermit in his sheepskin, on whom she had bestowed a gift of wine, was in
fact a young man o