nce more seen and spoken to Polykarp. He no
doubt knew where to seek her, and certainly, she thought, he would by
this time have returned, if the storm and the starless night had not
rendered it an impossibility to come up the mountain from the oasis.

"To-morrow I shall see him again, and then I will open my heart to him,
and he shall read my soul like a book, and on every page, and in every
line he will find his own name. And I will tell him too that I have
prayed to his 'Good Shepherd,' and how much good it has done me, and
that I will be a Christian like his sister Marthana and his mother.
Dorothea will be glad indeed when she hears it, and she at any rate
cannot have thought that I was wicked, for she always loved me, and the
children--the children--"

The bright crowd of merry faces came smiling in upon her fancy, and her
thoughts passed insensibly into dreams; kindly sleep touched her heart
with its gentle hand, and its breath swept every shadow of trouble from
her soul. She slept, smiling and untroubled as a child whose eyes some
guardian angel softly kisses, while her strange protector now turned the
flickering wood on the damp hearth and with a reddening face blew up the
dying charcoal-fire, and again walked restlessly up and down, and paused
each time he passed the entrance to the cave, to throw a longing glance
at the light which shone out from Sirona's sleeping-room.

Since the moment when he had flung Polykarp to the ground, Paulus had
not succeeded in recovering his self-command; not for a moment had he
regretted the deed, for the reflection had never occurred to him, that
a fall on the stony soil of the Sacred Mountain, which was as hard as
iron, must hurt more than a fall on the' sand of the arena.

"The impudent fellow," thought he, "richly deserved what he got. Who
gave him a better right over Sirona than he, Paulus himself, had--he who
had saved her life, and had taken it upon himself to protect her?" Her
great beauty had charmed him from the first moment of their meeting, but
no impure thought stirred his heart as he gazed at her with delight, and
listened with emotion to her childlike talk. It was the hot torrent of
Polykarp's words that had first thrown the spark into his soul, which
jealousy and the dread of having to abandon Sirona to another, had soon
fanned into a consuming flame. He would not give up this woman, he would
continue to care for her every need, she should owe everything to him,