aps woo her, and forget his pride and her lowly
position, and ask her to be his wife.

She thought this out fully, but before she had reached the half circle
enclosed by the Philosophers' busts the question occurred to her mind.
And Irene?

Had she gone with him and quitted her without bidding her farewell
because the young heart was possessed with a passionate love for
Publius--who was indeed the most lovable of men? And he? Would he
indeed, out of gratitude for what she hoped to do for him, make up his
mind, if she demanded it, to make her Irene his wife--the poor but more
than lovely daughter of a noble house?

And if this were possible, if these two could be happy in love and
honor, should she Klea come between the couple to divide them? Should
she jealously snatch Irene from his arms and carry her back to the
gloomy temple which now--after she had fluttered awhile in sportive
freedom in the sunny air--would certainly seem to her doubly
sinister and unendurable? Should she be the one to plunge Irene into
misery--Irene, her child, the treasure confided to her care, whom she
had sworn to cherish?

"No, and again no," she said resolutely. "She was born for happiness,
and I for endurance, and if I dare beseech thee to grant me one thing
more, O thou infinite Divinity! it is that Thou wouldst cut out from my
soul this love which is eating into my heart as though it were rotten
wood, and keep me far from envy and jealousy when I see her happy in his
arms. It is hard--very hard to drive one's own heart out into the desert
in order that spring may blossom in that of another: but it is well
so--and my mother would commend me and my father would say I had acted
after his own heart, and in obedience to the teaching of the great men
on these pedestals. Be still, be still my aching heart--there--that is
right!"

Thus reflecting she went past the busts of Zeno and Chrysippus, glancing
at their features distinct in the moonlight: and her eyes falling on
the smooth slabs of stone with which the open space was paved, her own
shadow caught her attention, black and sharply defined, and exactly
resembling that of some man travelling from one town to another in his
cloak and broad-brimmed hat.

"Just like a man!" she muttered to herself; and as, at the same moment,
she saw a figure resembling her own, and, like herself, wearing a hat,
appear near the entrance to the tombs, and fancied she recognized it as
Publius, a thought, a s