as the spot on which her head lay--to a safer place, and into
the partial shade of a low bush. As I did this, one of her delicate hands
was scratched and torn on the rough stones, and drops of blood came to the
surface. In the other hand were crushed a few spikes of asphodel, the very
flowers, no doubt, which had lured me so near the same dangerous brink. It
seemed impossible to go away and leave her, but it was cruel to delay. My
feet felt like lead as I ran along those dark galleries and down the stone
flights of giddy stairs. Just in the entrance stood one of those
pertinacious sellers of old coins and bits of marble. I threw down a piece
of silver on his little stand, seized a small tin basin in which he had
his choicest coins, emptied them on the ground, and saying, in my poor
Italian, "Lady--ill--water," I had filled the basin at the old stone
fountain near by, and was half way up the first flight of stairs again,
before he knew what had happened.

When I reached the place where I had left the beautiful stranger she was
not there. Unutterable horror seized me. Had I, after all, left her too
near that crumbling edge? I groaned aloud and turned to run down. A feeble
voice stopped me--a whisper rather than a voice, for there was hardly
strength to speak,--

"Who is there?"

"Oh, thank God," I exclaimed, "you are not dead!" and I sprang to the next
of the cross corridors, from which the sound had come.

She was there, sitting up, leaning against the wall. She looked almost
more terrified than relieved when she saw me. I bathed her face and hands
in the water, and told her how I had found her insensible, and had drawn
her away from the outer edge before I had gone for the water. She did not
speak for some moments, but looked at me earnestly and steadily, with
tears standing in her large blue eyes.

Then she said, "I did not know that any one but myself ever came to the
Coliseum so early. I thought I should die here alone; and Robert was not
willing I should come."

"I owe you my life," she added, bursting into hysterical crying.

Then in a few moments she half laughed, as if at some droll thought, and
said, "But how could you drag me? You are not nearly so big as I am. The
angels must have helped you;" and holding up the poor crushed asphodels,
she went on: "As soon as I came to myself, I saw the asphodels in my hand,
and I said, 'Asphodel for burial;' and tried to throw them away, so that
if Robert came he wou