It was hot and close; bats, scared by the flare of the torch, fluttered
round her with a ghostly rustle, startling and disgusting her; still,
she felt less alarm here than outside; and when, as she went forward she
thought of the great temple she was coming to, of its wonderful beauty
and solemn majesty, she only cared to press onward to that refuge of
ineffable splendor where all would be peace. To die there, to perish
there with her lover, did not seem hard; nay, she felt proud to think
that she might await death in the noblest edifice ever raised to a god by
mortal hands. Here Fate might have its way; she had known the highest
joy she had ever dreamed of, and where on earth was there a sublimer tomb
than this sanctuary of the sovereign of the universe, whose supremacy
even the other gods acknowledged with trembling!

She had known the sacred halls of the temple from her childhood, and she
pictured them as filled with thousands of lofty souls, united in this
supreme hour by one feeling and one purpose. She even fancied she could
hear the inspired and heartfelt strains of the enthusiasts who were
prepared to give their lives for the god of their fathers, that she
breathed the odor of incense and burnt sacrifices, that she saw the
chorus of youths and maidens, led by priests and dancing with solemn
grace in mazy circles round the flower-decked altars. There among the
elders who had gathered round Olympius to meditate devoutly on the coming
doom and on the inmost meaning of the mysteries--among the adepts who
were anxiously noting, in the observatories of the Serapeum, the fateful
courses of the stars, the swirling of the clouds and the flight of birds,
she would doubtless find her father; and the fresh wound bled anew as she
remembered that she was the bearer of news which must deeply shock and
grieve him. Still, no doubt, she would find him wrapped in dignified
readiness for the worst, sorrowing serenely for the doomed world, and so