ink, but
of him, him, only him! "Oh, were he alive!" Ay, keep your face bidden;
you know too well it could not bear my eyes upon it.'

Veranilda threw back the long veil, and stood looking at him.

'Eyes red with weeping,' he exclaimed, 'and for whom? If you were true
to me, would you not rejoice that I had slain my enemy? You say you
were joyful in the thought of seeing me again? You see me--and with
what countenance?'

'I see not Basil,' she murmured, her hands upon her breast.

'You see a false lover, an ignoble traitor--the Basil shown you by
Marcian. What would it avail me to speak in my own defence? His voice
is in your ears, its lightest tone outweighing my most solemn oath.
"Oh, that he were alive!" That is all you find to say to me.'

'I know you not,' sobbed Veranilda. 'Alas, I know you not!'

'Nor I you. I dreamt of a Veranilda who loved so purely and so
constantly that not a thousand slanderers could have touched her heart
with a shadow of mistrust. But who are you--you whom the first gross
lie of a man lusting for your beauty utterly estranges from your faith?
Who are you--who wail for the liar's death, and shrink in horror from
the hand that slew him? I ever heard that the daughters of the Goths
were chaste and true and fearless. So they may be--all but one, whose
birth marked her for faithlessness.'

As though smitten by a brutal blow, Veranilda bowed her head,
shuddering. Once more she looked at Basil, for an instant, with wide
eyes of fear; then hid herself beneath the veil, and was gone.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MOUNT OF THE MONK

Basil rode with his own man apart from Venantius and the soldiers who
guarded the conveyance in which sat Veranilda. Venantius, for his part,
would fain have lightened the way with friendly talk, but finding Basil
irresponsive, he left him to his gloomy meditations. And so they came
to Aquinum, where they passed the night.

By way of precaution, the captain set a guard before the house in which
his fellow-traveller slept, and at daybreak, as soon as he had risen,
one of the soldiers thus employed reported to him that the young Roman
had fallen into such distemper that it seemed doubtful whether he could
continue the journey; a servant who had slept at Basil's door declared
that all through the night his master had talked wildly, like one
fever-frenzied. Venantius visited the sick man, and found him risen,
but plainly in poor case for travel.

'Why, you will n