is, that she rules not by stern laws, but smiles while she makes us her
sport."




CHAPTER XV.

It was a splendid morning; not a cloud dimmed the sky which spread high
above desert, mountain, and oasis, like an arched tent of uniform deep-
blue silk. How delicious it is to breathe the pure, light, aromatic air
on the heights, before the rays of the sun acquire their mid-day power,
and the shadows of the heated porphyry cliffs, growing shorter and
shorter, at last wholly disappear!

With what delight did Sirona inhale this pure atmosphere, when after a
long night--the fourth that she had passed in the anchorite's dismal
cave-she stepped out into the air. Paulus sat by the hearth, and was so
busily engaged with some carving, that he did not observe her approach.

"Kind good man!" thought Sirona, as she perceived a steaming pot on the
fire, and the palm-branches which the Alexandrian had fastened up by the
entrance to the cave, to screen her from the mounting sun. She knew the
way without a guide to the spring from which Paulus had brought her water
at their first meeting, and she now slipped away, and went down to it
with a pretty little pitcher of burnt clay in her hand. Paulus did
indeed see her, but he made as though he neither, saw nor heard, for he
knew she was going there to wash herself, and to dress and smarten
herself as well as might be--for was she not a woman! When she returned,
she looked not less fresh and charming than on that morning when she had