mountain; the moon lighted her on her way, and for fully an hour she
continued her upward road without any rest. Then she heard the voices of
travellers who were coming towards her, and she left the beaten road and
tried to get away from them, for she feared that her greyhound, which she
still carried' on her arm, would betray her by barking, or if they
heard it whining, and saw it limp. At last she had sunk down on a stone,
and had reflected on all the events of the last few hours, and on what
she had to do next. She could look back dreamily on the past, and build
castles in the air in a blue-skyed future-this was easy enough; but she
did not find it easy to reflect with due deliberation, and to think in
earnest. Only one thing was perfectly clear to her: she would rather
starve and die of thirst, and shame, and misery-nay, she would rather be
the instrument of her own death, than return to her husband. She knew
that she must in the first instance expect ill-usage, scorn, and
imprisonment in a dark room at the Gaul's hands; but all that seemed to
her far more endurable than the tenderness with which he from time to
time approached her. When she thought of that, she shuddered and
clenched her white teeth, and doubled her fists so tightly that her nails
cut the flesh. But what was she to do? If Hermas were to meet her? And
yet what help could she look for from him, for what was he but a mere
lad, and the thought of linking her life to his, if only for a day,
appeared to her foolish and ridiculous.

Certainly she felt no inclination to repent or to blame herself; still it
had been a great folly on her part to call him into the house for the
sake of amusing herself with him.

Then she recollected the severe punishment she had once suffered,
because, when she was still quite little, and without meaning any harm,
she had taken her father's water-clock to pieces, and had spoiled it.