not return, I shall leave a widow here--"

"And in that instance, be at peace. I am thy brother."

Costobarus pressed Philip's hand.

"Farewell," he said; and Philip embraced him and went forth.

Costobarus turned to one of his closed windows and thrust it open, for
the influence of the spring sun had made itself felt in the past
important hour for Costobarus.

Noon stood beautiful and golden over the city. The sky was
clean-washed and blue, and the surface of the Mediterranean, glimpsed
over white house-tops that dropped away toward the sea-front, was a
wandering sheet of flashing silver. Here and there were the ruins of
the last year's warfare, but over the fallen walls of gray earth the
charity of running vines and the new growth of the spring spread a
beauty, both tender and compassionate.

In such open spaces inner gardens were exposed and almond trees tossed
their crowns of white bloom over pleached arbors of old grape-vines.
Here the Mediterranean birds sang with poignant sweetness while the
new-budded limbs of the oleanders tilted suddenly under their weight
as they circled from covert to covert.

But the energy of the young spring was alive only in the birds and the
blossoming orchards. Wherever the solid houses fronted in unbroken
rows the passages between, there were no open windows, no carpets
swung from latticed balconies; no buyers moved up the roofed-over