; and, fully determined in any case not to follow Paulus, whom she
began to distrust, she replied, as she coldly returned his greeting,
"There are many hours yet before tomorrow evening in which we can discuss
everything."

While Paulus was with great difficulty rekindling the fire, she was once
more alone, and again she began to be alarmed in the dark cavern.

She called the Alexandrian. "The darkness terrifies me so," she said.
"You still had some oil in the jug this morning; perhaps you may be able
to contrive a little lamp for me; it is so fearful to stay here in the
dark."

Paulus at once took a shard, tore a strip from his tattered coat, twisted
it together, and laid it for a wick in the greasy fluid, lighted it at
the slowly reviving fire, and putting this more than simple light in
Sirona's hand, he said, "It will serve its purpose; in Alexandria I will
see that you have lamps which give more light, and which are made by a
better artist."

Sirona placed the lamp in a hollow in the rocky wall at the head of her
bed, and then lay down to rest. Light scares away wild beasts and fear
too from the resting-place of man, and it kept terrifying thoughts far
away from the Gaulish woman.

She contemplated her situation clearly and calmly, and quite decided that
she would neither quit the cave, nor entrust herself to the anchorite,
till she had once more seen and spoken to Polykarp. He no doubt knew
where to seek her, and certainly, she thought, he would by this time have
returned, if the storm and the starless night had not rendered it an
impossibility to come up the mountain from the oasis.

"To-morrow I shall see him again, and then I will open my heart to him,
and he shall read my soul like a book, and on every page, and in every
line he will find his own name. And I will tell him too that I have
prayed to his 'Good Shepherd,' and how much good it has done me, and that
I will be a Christian like his sister Marthana and his mother. Dorothea
will be glad indeed when she hears it, and she at any rate cannot have
thought that I was wicked, for she always loved me, and the children--the
children--"

The bright crowd of merry faces came smiling in upon her fancy, and her
thoughts passed insensibly into dreams; kindly sleep touched her heart
with its gentle hand, and its breath swept every shadow of trouble from
her soul. She slept, smiling and untroubled as a child whose eyes some
guardian angel softly kisses, while h