hing her
all the while, Miriam kept her eyes fixed upon his face, as though she
searched there for something which she could but half recall. Suddenly
an inspiration entered into them and she said:

"Now I have it! You are the Roman captain, Gallus, who brought me the
letter from----" and she paused, thrusting her hand into the bosom of
her robe, then went on with something like a sob: "Oh! it is gone. How
did it go? Let me think."

"Don't think," said Gallus; "there are so many things in the world which
it is better not to think about. Yes, as it happens, I am that man,
and some years ago I did bring you the letter from Marcus, called The
Fortunate. Also, as it chanced, I never forgot your sweet face and knew
it again at a time when it was well that you should find a friend. No,
we won't talk about it now. Look, the old slave calls you. It is time
that you should break your fast, and I also must eat and have my wound
dressed. Afterwards we will talk."

All that morning Miriam saw nothing more of Gallus. Indeed, he did not
mean that she should, since he was sure that her new-found sense ought
not to be overstrained at first, lest it should break down again, never
to recover. So she went out and sat alone by the garden beach, for the
soldiers had orders to respect her privacy, and gazed at the sea.

As she sat thus in quiet, event by event the terrible past came back to
her. She remembered it all now--their flight from Tyre; the march into
Jerusalem; the sojourn in the dark with the Essenes; the Old Tower and
what befell there; the escape of Marcus; her trial before the Sanhedrim;
the execution of her sentence upon the gateway; and then that fearful
night when the flames of the burning Temple scorched to her very brain,
and the sights and sounds of slaughter withered her heart. After this
she could recall but one more thing--the vision of the majestic figure
of Benoni standing against a background of black smoke upon the lofty
cloister-roof and defying the Romans before he plunged headlong in the
flames beneath. Of her rescue on the roof of the Gate Nicanor, of her
being carried before Titus Caesar in the arms of Gallus, and of his
judgment concerning her she recollected nothing. Nor, indeed, did she
ever attain to a clear memory of those events, while the time between
them and the recovery of her reason by the seashore in the garden at
Tyre always remained a blank. That troubled fragment of her life was
sunk in a bl