had not yet returned from
the mountain.

Phoebicius did not doubt that the woman who had joined the
caravan--which he himself had seen yesterday--was his fugitive wife, and
he knew that his delay might have reduced his earnest wish to overtake
her and punish her to the remotest probability; but he was a Roman
soldier, and would rather have laid violent hands on himself than have
left his post without a deputy. When at last his fellow-worshippers came
from their sacrifice and worship of the rising sun, his preparations for
his long journey were completed.

Phoebicius carefully impressed on the decurion all he had to do during
his absence, and how he was to conduct himself; then he delivered the
key of his house into Petrus' keeping as well as the black slave-woman,
who wept loudly and passionately over the flight of her mistress; he
requested the senator to bring the anchorite's misdeed to the knowledge
of the bishop, and then, guided by the Amalekite Talib, who rode before
him on his dromedary, he trotted hastily away in pursuit of the caravan,
so as to reach the sea, if possible, before its embarkation.

As the hoofs of the mule sounded fainter and fainter in the distance,
Paulus also quitted the senator's courtyard; Dorothea pointed after him
as he walked towards the mountain. "In truth, husband," said she, "this
has been a strange morning; everything that has occurred looks as clear
as day, and yet I cannot understand it all. My heart aches when I think
what may happen to the wretched Sirona if her enraged husband overtakes
her. It seems to me that there are two sorts of marriage; one was
instituted by the most loving of the angels, nay, by the All-merciful
Himself, but the other it is not to be thought of! How can those two
live together for the future? And that under our roof! Their closed
house looks to me as though ruined and burnt-out, and we have already
seen the nettles spring up which grow everywhere among the ruins of
human dwellings."

CHAPTER XII.

The path of every star is fixed and limited, every plant bears flowers
and fruit which in form and color exactly resemble their kind, and in
all the fundamental characteristics of their qualities and dispositions,
of their instinctive bent and external impulse, all animals of the same
species resemble each other; thus, the hunter who knows the red-deer in
his father's forest, may know in every forest on earth how the stag will
behave in any given ca