aid no heed to this sign of an approaching storm.

Hastily, and with so little attention that he confused one object with
another in the little store-cellar, he laid some bread, a knife, and
some dates in front of the entrance to the cave, called out to his guest
that he should soon return, and hurried at a rapid pace up the mountain.

Sirona answered him with a gentle word of farewell, and did not even
look round after him, for she was glad to be alone, and so soon as the
sound of his step had died away she gave herself up once more to the
overwhelming torrent of new and deep feelings which had flooded her soul
ever since she had heard Polykarp's ardent hymn of love.

Paulus, in the last few hours, was Menander again, but the lonely woman
in the cavern--the cause of this transformation--the wife of Phoebicius,
had undergone an even greater change than he. She was still Sirona, and
yet not Sirona.

When the anchorite had commanded her to retire into the cave she had
obeyed him willingly, nay, she would have withdrawn even without his
desire, and have sought for solitude; for she felt that something
mighty, hitherto unknown to her, and incomprehensible even to herself,
was passing in her soul, and that a nameless but potent something
had grown up in her heart, had struggled free, and had found life
and motion; a something that was strange, and yet precious to her,
frightening, and yet sweet, a pain, and yet unspeakably delightful. An
emotion such as she had never before known had mastered her, and she
felt, since hearing Polykarp's speech, as if a new and purer blood was
flowing rapidly through her veins. Every nerve quivered like the leaves
of the poplars in her former home when the wind blows down to meet the
Rhone, and she found it difficult to follow what Paulus said, and still
more so to find the right answer to his questions.

As soon as she was alone she sat down on her bed, rested her elbows on
her knees, and her head in her hand, and the growing and surging flood
of her passion broke out in an abundant stream of warm tears.

She had never wept so before; no anguish, no bitterness was infused into
the sweet refreshing dew of those tears. Fair flowers of never dreamed
of splendor and beauty blossomed in the heart of the weeping woman, and
when at length her tears ceased, there was a great silence, but also a
great glory within her and around her. She was like a man who has grown
up in an under-ground-room, wh