CHAPTER XXIII.

Gorgo sat by the bed of her apparently lifeless father, gazing fondly at
the worn and wax-like features, and listening to his breathing, now soft
and easy and again painful and convulsive, as it fluttered through his
nostrils. She held his cold damp hand tightly clasped, or stroked it
gently, or now and then, when his closed eyelids quivered, raised it
tenderly to her lips.

The room in which they were lay on one side of the hypostyle and behind
the right-hand--or western--colonnade; more forward, therefore, than the
veiled statue and to its left hand. The noise of the toilers at the
barricade and the crash of the blows of the battering-ram came up from
just below, and at each thud of the engine the senseless man started
convulsively and a look of intense pain crossed his face. But, though it
was indeed grievous to Gorgo to see her father suffering, though she told
herself again and again that, ere long, the sanctuary must fall into the
hands of the Christians, she felt safe, thankful and sheltered up here,
in her old friend's half-lighted and barely-furnished room, shut off, at
any rate, from the frenzied wretches of whom she thought only with
loathing and fear.

She was wearied out with her night of unrest, but the agitation and
excitement she had gone through were still vividly present to her mind,
and even on the comfortable couch in her own snug room at home her
perturbed spirit would have prevented her sleeping. Her brain was still
in a ferment, and here, in comparative peace, she had time to think over