wn maintenance, but that
of her adopted children.

Hannah was bound to Alexandria by many ties; in the first place she
clung to the poor and sick, many of whom had grown very dear to her,
and how many girls who had gone astray had she rescued from evil in the
factory alone! She begged for a short time for reflection, and this was
granted to her. By the fifteenth of March she was to decide, but by
the fifth she had already made up her mind, for while Hannah was in the
papyrus-factory Antinous had succeeded in getting into Paulina's garden
shortly before sunset and in stealing close up to Hannah's house. Mary
again observed him as he approached and signed to him to go, in her
usual pleasant way; but the Bithynian was more excited than usual; he
seized her hand and clasped her with urgent warmth as he implored her
to be merciful. She endeavored at once to free herself, but he would not
let her go, but cried in coaxing tones:

"I must see her and speak to her to-day, dear, good Mary, only this
once!" And before she could prevent it he had kissed her forehead and
had flown into the house to Selene. The little hunchback did not know
what had happened to her; confused and almost paralyzed by conflicting
feelings she stood shame-faced, gazing at the ground. She felt that
something quite extraordinary had happened to her, but this wonderful
something radiated a dazzling splendor, and since this had risen for
her, for poor Mary, a feeling of pride quite new to her mingled with the
shame and indignation that filled her soul. She needed a few minutes
to collect herself and to recover a sense of her duty, and those few
minutes were made good use of by Antinous.

He flew with long steps into the room in which, on that
never-to-be-forgotten night, he had laid Selene on the couch, and even
at the threshold he called her by her name. She started and laid aside
the book out of which she was reading to her blind brother. He called a
second time, beseechingly. Selene recognized him and asked calmly:

"Do you want me, or dame Hannah?"

"You, you!" he cried passionately. "Oh Selene, I pulled you out of the
water, and since that night I have never ceased to think of you and I
must die for love of you. Have your thoughts never, never met mine on
the way to you? Are you still and always as cold, as passive as you were
then when you belonged half to life and half to death? For months have
I prowled round this house as the shade of a dead ma