ad been so accustomed to let himself be
waited on that he accepted the shepherdess's good offices as a matter of
course, and she never attempted to account to herself for her readiness
to serve him. Stephanus would have suffered in dispensing with her, and
to her, her visits to the well and her conversations with the old man
had become a need, nay a necessity, for she still was ignorant
whether Hermas was yet alive, or whether Phoebicius had killed him in
consequence of her betrayal. Perhaps all that Stephanus told her of his
son's journey of investigation was an invention of Paulus to spare the
sick man, and accustom him gradually to the loss of his child; and yet
she was only too willing to believe that Hermas still lived, and she
quitted the neighborhood of the cave as late as possible, and filled
the sick man's water-jar before the sun was up, only because she said to
herself that the fugitive on his return would seek no one else so soon
as his father.

She had not one really quiet moment, for if a falling stone, an
approaching footstep, or the cry of a beast broke the stillness of the
desert she at once hid herself, and listened with a beating heart; much
less from fear of Petrus her master, from whom she had run away, than
in the expectation of hearing the step of the man whom she had betrayed
into the hand of his enemy, and for whom she nevertheless painfully
longed day and night.

As often as she lingered by the spring she wetted her stubborn hair to
smooth it, and washed her face with as much zeal as if she thought she
should succeed in washing the dark hue out of her skin. And all this she
did for him, that on his return she might charm him as much as the
white woman in the oasis, whom she hated as fiercely as she loved him
passionately.

During the heavy storm of last night a torrent from the mountain-height
had shed itself into her retreat and had driven her out of it. Wet
through, shelterless, tormented by remorse, fear and longing, she had
clambered from stone to stone, and sought refuge and peace under first
one rock and then another; thus she had been attracted by the glimmer
of light that shone out of the new dwelling of the pious Paulus; she had
seen and recognized the Alexandrian, but he had not observed her as he
cowered on the ground near his hearth deeply sunk in thought.

She knew now where the excommunicated man dwelt after whom Stephanus
often asked, and she had gathered from the old man's l