the children had been shut into the
house, and even the shutters barred as soon as the corpse had been
brought out. The authorities had ordered that this should be done in
every case, so that the pestilence might not pervade the streets or be
disseminated among the healthy. Food and drink were handed to the
captives through a wicket in the door. Such regulations, she added,
seemed particularly well-considered and wise. But she would have done
better to keep her opinions to herself, for before she had done speaking
Katharina gave her an angry push with her foot. Then she desired her not
to be sparing with the 'smegma',--[A material like soap, but used in a
soft state.]--and to wash her hair as thoroughly as possible.

This was done; and Katharina herself rubbed her hands and arms with
passionate diligence. Then she had water poured over her head again and
again, till, when she desired the maid to desist, she had to lean
breathless and almost exhausted against the marble.

But in spite of smegma and water she still felt the pressure of the
burning hand on top of her head, and her heart seemed oppressed by some
invisible load of lead.

Her mother! oh, her mother! She had kissed her there, where the plague
had actually touched her, and in fancy she could hear her gasping and
begging for a drink of water like the dying wretches to whom her fate had
led her. And then--then came the servants of the senate and shut her into
the pestilential house with the sick; she saw the pest in mortal form, a
cruel and malignant witch; behind her, tall and threatening, stood her
inexorable companion Death, reaching out a bony hand and clutching her
mother, and then all who were in the house with her, and last of all,
herself.

Her arms dropped by her side: powerful and terrible as she had felt
herself this morning, she was now crushed by a sense of miserable and
impotent weakness. Her defiance had been addressed to a mortal, a frail,
tender woman; and God and Fate had put her in the front of the battle
instead of Heliodora. She shuddered at the thought.

As she went up from the bath-room, her mother met her in the hall and
said:

"What, still here, Child? How you startled me! And is it true? Is
Plotinus really ill of a complaint akin to the plague?"

"Worse than that, mother," she replied sadly. "He has the plague; and I
remembered that a bath is the right thing when one has been in a
plague-stricken house; you, too, have kissed and