seducer--ended it without haste, and with careful observance of all the
prescribed forms. Then he took two strong ropes from the wall, pulled
himself up, straight and proud, as if he were about to exhort his
soldiers to courage before a battle, cleared his throat like an orator in
the Forum before he begins his discourse, and entered the bedroom with a
dignified demeanor. Not the smallest suspicion of the possibility of her
escape troubled his sense of security, when, not finding Sirona in the
sleeping-room, he went into the sitting-room to carry out the meditated
punishment. Here again--no one.

He paused in astonishment; but the thought that she could have fled
appeared to him so insane, that he immediately and decisively dismissed
it. No doubt she feared his wrath, and was hidden under her bed or
behind the curtain which covered his clothes. "The dog," thought he,
"is still cowering by her--" and he began to make a noise, half whistling
and half hissing, which Iambe could not bear, and which always provoked
her to bark angrily--but in vain. All was still in the vacant room,
still as death. He was now seriously anxious; at first deliberately, and
then with rapid haste, he threw the light under every vessel, into every
corner, behind every cloth, and rummaged in places that not even a child
--nay hardly a frightened bird could have availed itself of for
concealment. At last his right hand fairly dropped the ropes, and his
left, in which he held the lamp, began to tremble. He found the shutters
of the sleeping-room open; where Sirona had been sitting on the seat
looking at the moon, before Hermas had come upon the scene. "Then she is
not here!" he muttered, and setting the lamp on the little table, from
which he had just now flung Polykarp's glass, he tore open the door, and
hurried into the courtyard. That she could have swung herself out into
the road, and have set out in the night for the open desert, had not yet
entered into his mind. He shook the door that closed in the homestead,