me--to die.'

'Ah, no, no,' he said, startled; 'how could you!' His mind only caught
the suggestion to reflect upon her transparent eyes stricken with the
tragedy of death. From so gentle a tone he could not gather a sinister
hint; moreover, she smiled to effect a blind.

'Now that your quest is over, I in turn desire certain knowledge. Gratify
me, and so shall your rash footing here to-day stand redeemed.'

She signed for him to follow, and led the way by rock and pool to the
entrance of the cave. There upon a boulder she leaned, and pointed him up
to the rock above, where the rough inscription he had set there remained
unimpaired.

'That is your handiwork?'

'Yes.'

'What does it mean?'

His heart thumped. To her he had addressed that legend, not knowing what
she was.

'I do not know that you are fit to hear.'

Her just indignation refrained from him, and his heart smote him.

'Ah! I should not judge. Hear then!' and he read.

For an instant her face fell, troubled, and she moved restlessly.

'And who are They? Who is the Father?'

'God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.'

'He did not make me.'

'But He did.'

'Say that He made you if so you please: I speak for myself. Pass on now.
Who is the Son?'

'Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord, who suffered and died to save us from
our sins.'

'Suffered and died!' she exclaimed, and then added, 'I have no sins.'

'Ah, you have!' said Christian, aghast.

'You may have, may be, but not I. Pass on. Who is the other one?'

'The Holy Ghost the Comforter.'

'Whose comforter? Theirs? yours? not mine--I need no comfort.'

When he said, 'O poor, lost soul, God have mercy!' she rose to passion.

'You shall not say so; I will not endure it. And why should you look at
me so? and why should you speak it low? Am I to be pitied--and pitied of
you, who but for my pity would by now be a shredded and decayed patch
sunk deep?'

'My body.'

Diadyomene recovered herself instantly, recalled to the larger conquest
she designed.

'Yet pass on again: there is more--"At your service!" Whose?'

'Yours.'

'Mine! That is not possible,' she said coldly; 'nor of the whole can I
make sense.'

'It means that I offered to serve her whose footprints I had
seen--yours,--and pledged myself by the sacred names that she should have
no fears.'

'Fears!'

Christian flushed painfully. It was not possible to intimate to her how
he had considered that a woman uncloth