Caesar is here, but there the Redeemer, kind and merciful. And there is
no death there. Thou lovest me; think, then, how happy I shall be. Oh,
dear Marcus, think that thou wilt come to me there."

Here she stopped to get breath in her sick breast, and then raised his
hand to her lips,--

"Marcus?"

"What, dear one?"

"Do not weep for me, and remember this,--thou wilt come to me. I have
lived a short time, but God gave thy soul to me; hence I shall tell
Christ that though I died, and thou wert looking at my death, though
thou wert left in grief, thou didst not blaspheme against His will, and
that thou lovest Him always. Thou wilt love Him, and endure my death
patiently? For then He will unite us. I love thee and I wish to be with
thee."

Breath failed her then, and in a barely audible voice she finished,

"Promise me this, Marcus!"

Vinicius embraced her with trembling arms, and said,

"By thy sacred head! I promise."

Her pale face became radiant in the sad light of the moon, and once more
she raised his hand to her lips, and whispered,--

"I am thy wife!"

Beyond the wall the pretorians playing scriptoe duodecim raised a louder
dispute; but Vinicius and Lygia forgot the prison, the guards, the
world, and, feeling within them the souls of angels, they began to pray.

Chapter LX

FOR three days, or rather three nights, nothing disturbed their peace.
When the usual prison work was finished, which consisted in separating
the dead from the living and the grievously sick from those in better
health, when the wearied guards had lain down to sleep in the corridors,
Vinicius entered Lygia's dungeon and remained there till daylight. She
put her head on his breast, and they talked in low voices of love and
of death. In thought and speech, in desires and hopes even, both were
removed unconsciously more and more from life, and they lost the sense
of it. Both were like people who, having sailed from land in a ship,
saw the shore no more, and were sinking gradually into infinity. Both
changed by degrees into sad souls in love with each other and with
Christ, and ready to fly away. Only at times did pain start up in the
heart of Vinicius like a whirlwind, at times there flashed in him like
lightning, hope, born of love and faith in the crucified God; but he
tore himself away more and more each day from the earth, and yielded to
death. In the morning, when he went from the prison, he looked on the
world, on t