me nor mourn for me."

"Poor woman!" said Paulus. "Your husband then showed you very little
love."

"Love," laughed Sirona, "Phoebicius and love! Only yesterday I told you,
how cruelly he used to torture me after his feasts, when he was drunk or
when he recovered from one of his swoons. But one thing he did to me,
one thing which broke the last thread of a tie between us. No one yet
has ever heard a word of it from me; not even Dorothea, who often blamed
me when I let slip a hard word against my husband. It was well for her
to talk--if I had found a husband like Petrus I might perhaps have been
like Dorothea. It is a marvel, which I myself do not understand, that I
did not grow wicked with such a man, a man who--why should I conceal it--
who, when we were at Rome, because he was in debt, and because he hoped
to get promotion through his legate Quintillus, sold me--me--to him. He
himself brought the old man--who had often followed me about--into his
house, but our hostess, a good woman, had overheard the matter, and
betrayed it all to me. It is so base, so vile--it seems to blacken my
soul only to think of it! The legate got little enough in return for his
sesterces, but Phoebicius did not restore his wages of sin, and his rage
against me knew no bounds when he was transferred to the oasis at the
instigation of his betrayed chief. Now you know all, and never advise me
again to return to that man to whom my misfortune has bound me.

"Only listen how the poor little beast in there is whining. It wants to
come to me, and has not the strength to move."

Paulus looked after her sympathetically as she disappeared under the
opening in the rock, and he awaited her return with folded arms. He