VI

GREAT FEAR AND RECOVERED JOY





THEY carried the boy in a litter to the House of the Golden Pillars,
summoning the most skilful physician of Antioch to attend him. For
hours the child was as quiet as death. Hermas watched the white
eyelids, folded close like lily-buds at night, even as one watches
for the morning. At last they opened; but the fire of fever was
burning in the eyes, and the lips were moving in a wild delirium.

Hour after hour that sweet childish voice rang through the halls and
chambers of the splendid, helpless house, now rising in shrill calls
of distress and senseless laughter, now sinking in weariness and
dull moaning. The stars waxed and waned; the sun rose and set; the
roses bloomed and fell in the garden, the birds sang and slept among
the jasmine-bowers. But in the heart of Hermas there was no song, no
bloom, no light--only speechless anguish, and a certain fearful
looking-for of desolation.

He was like a man in a nightmare. He saw the shapeless terror that
was moving toward him, but he was impotent to stay or to escape it.