hile she makes us her
sport."

CHAPTER XV.

It was a splendid morning; not a cloud dimmed the sky which spread high
above desert, mountain, and oasis, like an arched tent of uniform
deep-blue silk. How delicious it is to breathe the pure, light, aromatic
air on the heights, before the rays of the sun acquire their mid-day
power, and the shadows of the heated porphyry cliffs, growing shorter and
shorter, at last wholly disappear!

With what delight did Sirona inhale this pure atmosphere, when after a
long night--the fourth that she had passed in the anchorite's dismal
cave-she stepped out into the air. Paulus sat by the hearth, and was so
busily engaged with some carving, that he did not observe her approach.

"Kind good man!" thought Sirona, as she perceived a steaming pot on the
fire, and the palm-branches which the Alexandrian had fastened up by the
entrance to the cave, to screen her from the mounting sun. She knew the
way without a guide to the spring from which Paulus had brought her water
at their first meeting, and she now slipped away, and went down to it
with a pretty little pitcher of burnt clay in her hand. Paulus did indeed
see her, but he made as though he neither, saw nor heard, for he knew she
was going there to wash herself, and to dress and smarten herself as well
as might be--for was she not a woman! When she returned, she looked not
less fresh and charming than on that morning when she had been seen and
watched by Hermas. True, her heart was sore, true, she was perplexed and
miserable, but sleep and rest had long since effaced from her healthy,
youthful, and elastic frame all traces left by that fearful day of
flight; and fate, which often means best by us when it shows us a hostile
face, had sent her a minor anxiety to divert her from her graver cares.

Her greyhound was very ill, and it seemed that in the ill-treatment it
had experienced, not only its leg had been broken, but that it had
suffered some internal injury. The brisk, lively little creature fell
down powerless when ever it tried to stand, and when she took it up to
nurse it comfortably in her lap, it whined pitifully, and looked up at
her sorrowfully, and as if complaining to her. It would take neither food
nor drink; its cool little nose was hot; and when she left the cave,
Iambe lay panting on the fine woollen coverlet which Paulus had spread
upon the bed, unable even to look after her.

Before taking the dog the water she h