red. She fell into a sweet
sleep in her chair, and presently the refreshing breeze that springs up
in Rome towards five o'clock in summer blew through the drawn blinds to
fan her delicate cheek, and stir the little golden ringlets at her
temples. While she slept her face grew sad by slow degrees, and on her
lap her hands moved and lay with their palms turned upwards as if she
were appealing piteously to some higher power for mercy and help.

Shadows darkened softly under her eyes, as she lay thus, and the young
lids swelled and trembled; and she, who never shed tears waking, wept
silently in her sleep. The bright drops hung by the lashes and broke,
trickling down her cheeks, one by one, till they fell sideways upon her
bare white neck. Many they were and long they fell, and when they ceased
at last, her face was very white and still, as if she were quite dead,
and dead of a sorrow that could be consoled only in heaven.

She had dreamed that the Vestal's vow was broken at last, and that she
was sitting alone at night on the steps of the closed Temple, leaning
back against the base of a pillar, watching the stars that slowly
ascended out of the east; and she was thinking of what she had been, and
that she should never again stand within the holy place to feed the
sacred fire with the consecrated wood, and sweep the precious ashes into
the mysterious pit beneath the altar. Never again was she to write down
the records of the lordly Roman unions that had kept the stock great and
pure and the free blood clean from that of slaves for a thousand years.
Never might she sit at the feet of the Chief Virgin in the moonlit
court, listening to tales of holy Vestals in old time, while the slow
water murmured in the channels between one fountain and another.

It was all over, all ended, all behind her in the past for ever. Her vow
was broken, because her veiled cheek had touched the cheek of a living,
breathing man who had laid a strong hand upon her neck and had pressed
her close to him, she consenting, and always to consent. She was not to
die for it, since it was no mortal sin, but she was no longer a Vestal
now, and the Temple and the house of the pure in heart were shut against
her henceforth and would not be opened again. She knew that she had
passed the threshold for the last time, and that the man she loved would
soon come and take her away to another life. After that there would be
no fear in the world, since she would alway