come upon the scene. "Then she is
not here!" he muttered, and setting the lamp on the little table, from
which he had just now flung Polykarp's glass, he tore open the door, and
hurried into the courtyard. That she could have swung herself out into
the road, and have set out in the night for the open desert, had not yet
entered into his mind. He shook the door that closed in the homestead,
and found it locked; the watch-dogs roused themselves, and gave tongue,
when Phoebicius turned to Petrus' house, and began to knock at the door
with the brazen knocker, at first softly and then with growing anger; he
considered it as certain that his wife had sought and found protection
under the senator's roof. He could have shouted with rage and anguish,
and yet he hardly thought of his wife and the danger of losing her,
but only of Polykarp and the disgrace he had wrought upon him, and the
reparation he would exact from him, and his parents, who had dared to
tamper with his household rights--his, the imperial centurion's.

What was Sirona to him? In the flush of an hour of excitement he had
linked her destiny to his.

At Arelas, about two years since, one of his comrades had joined their
circle of boon-companions, and had related that he had been the witness
of a remarkable scene. A number of young fellows had surrounded a boy
and had unmercifully beaten him--he himself knew not wherefore. The
little one had defended himself bravely, but was at last overcome by
numbers. "Then suddenly," continued the soldier, "the door of a house
near the circus opened, and a young girl with long golden hair flew out,
and drove the boys to flight, and released the victim, her brother, from
his tormentors. She looked like a lioness," cried the narrator, "Sirona
she is called, and of all the pretty girls of Arelas, she is beyond
a doubt the prettiest." This opinion was confirmed on all sides, and
Phoebicius, who at that time had just been admitted to the grade of
"lion" among the worshippers of Mithras, and liked very well to hear
himself called "the lion," exclaimed, "I have long been seeking a
lioness, and here it seems to me that I have found one. Phoebicius and
Sirona--the two names sound very finely together."

On the following day he asked Sirona of her father for his wife, and
as he had to set out for Rome in a few days the wedding was promptly
celebrated. She had never before quitted Arelas, and knew not what she
was giving up, when she too