was speaking he had
gone up to Sirona, as a girl whose bird has escaped from its cage, and
who creeps up to it with timid care in the hope of recapturing it; he
offered her his hand, and as soon as he felt hers in his grasp, he had
carefully rescued her from her fearful position, and had led her down
to a secure footing on the plateau. So long as she followed him
unresistingly he led her on towards the mountain--without aim or fixed
destination--but away, away from the abyss.

She paused by a square block of diorite, and Paulus, who had not failed
to observe how heavy her steps were, desired her to sit down; he pushed
up a flag of stone, which he propped with smaller ones, so that Sirona
might not lack a support for her weary back. When he had accomplished
this, Sirona leaned back against the stone, and something of dawning
satisfaction was audible in the soft sigh, which was the first sound
that had escaped her tightly closed lips since her rescue. Paulus smiled
at her encouragingly, and said, "Now rest a little, I see what you want;
one cannot defy the heat of the sun for a whole day with impunity."

Sirona nodded, pointed to her mouth, and implored wearily and very
softly for "water, a little water." Paulus struck his hand against
his forehead, and cried eagerly, "Directly--I will bring you a fresh
draught. In a few minutes I will be back again."

Sirona looked after him as he hastened away. Her gaze became more and
more staring and glazed, and she felt as if the rock, on which she was
sitting, were changing into the ship which had brought her from Massilia
to Ostia. Every heaving motion of the vessel, which had made her so
giddy as it danced over the shifting waves, she now distinctly felt
again, and at last it seemed as if a whirlpool had seized the ship,
and was whirling it round faster and faster in a circle. She closed her
eyes, felt vaguely and in vain in the air for some holdfast, her head
fell powerless on one side, and before her cheek sank upon her shoulder
she uttered one feeble cry of distress, for she felt as if all her limbs
were dropping from her body, as leaves in autumn fall from the boughs,
and she fell back unconscious on the stony couch which Paulus had
constructed for her.

It was the first swoon that Sirona, with her sound physical and mental
powers, had ever experienced; but the strongest of her sex would have
been overcome by the excitement, the efforts, the privations, and the
sufferings