and singing birds; and he, he has darkened
its light, and fouled its springs, and broken down its flowers. All now
seems dumb and colorless, and if the abyss is my grave, no one will miss
me nor mourn for me."

"Poor woman!" said Paulus. "Your husband then showed you very little
love."

"Love," laughed Sirona, "Phoebicius and love! Only yesterday I told you,
how cruelly he used to torture me after his feasts, when he was drunk
or when he recovered from one of his swoons. But one thing he did to me,
one thing which broke the last thread of a tie between us. No one yet
has ever heard a word of it from me; not even Dorothea, who often blamed
me when I let slip a hard word against my husband. It was well for her
to talk--if I had found a husband like Petrus I might perhaps have been
like Dorothea. It is a marvel, which I myself do not understand, that
I did not grow wicked with such a man, a man who--why should I conceal
it--who, when we were at Rome, because he was in debt, and because he
hoped to get promotion through his legate Quintillus, sold me--me--to
him. He himself brought the old man--who had often followed me
about--into his house, but our hostess, a good woman, had overheard the
matter, and betrayed it all to me. It is so base, so vile--it seems to
blacken my soul only to think of it! The legate got little enough in
return for his sesterces, but Phoebicius did not restore his wages of
sin, and his rage against me knew no bounds when he was transferred to
the oasis at the instigation of his betrayed chief. Now you know all,
and never advise me again to return to that man to whom my misfortune
has bound me.

"Only listen how the poor little beast in there is whining. It wants to
come to me, and has not the strength to move."

Paulus looked after her sympathetically as she disappeared under the
opening in the rock, and he awaited her return with folded arms. He
could not see into the cave, for the space in which the bed stood was
closed at the end by the narrow passage which formed the entrance, and
which joined it at an angle as the handle of a scythe joins the blade.
She remained a long time, and he could hear now and then a tender word
with which she tried to comfort the suffering creature. Suddenly he
was startled by a loud and bitter cry from Sirona; no doubt, the poor
woman's affectionate little companion was dead, and in the dim twilight
of the cave she had seen its dulled eye, and felt the stiffness of