singing. How was it that this heathen could feel and utter emotions
which she had always conceived of as the special privilege of the
Christian, and, for her own part, had never felt so fervently as in the
hours when she had drawn closest to her Lord? Were not her own
sentiments the true and right ones; had her intercourse with these
heathens tainted her?

This doubt disturbed her greatly; it must be based on something more than
mere self-torture, for she had not once thought of asking to whom the
two-part hymn, with its tender appeal, was addressed, when Karnis had
first gone through it with her alone; nor even subsequently, when she had
sung it with Gorgo--timidly at first, more boldly the second time, and
finally without a mistake, but carried completely away by the beauty and
passion of the emotions it expressed.

She knew now, for Karnis himself had told her. It was the Lament of Isis
for her--lost husband and brother--oh that horrible heathen confusion!--
The departed Osiris. The wailing widow, who called on him to return with
"the silent speech of tears," was that queen of the idolater's devils
whose shameful worship her father had often spoke of with horror. Still,
this dirge was so true and noble, so penetrated with fervent, agonized
grief, that it had gone to her heart. The sorrowing Mother of God, Mary
herself, might thus have besought the resurrection of her Son; just thus
must the "God-like maid"--as she was called in the Arian confession of
her father--have uttered her grief, her prayers, and her longings.

But it was all a heathen delusion, all the trickery and jugglery of the
Devil, though she had failed to see through it, and had given herself up
to it, heart and soul. Nay, worse! for after she had learnt that Gorgo
was to represent Isis and she herself Nephthys, the sister of the divine