ready been touched with His grace. Farewell! Mine
eyes are dim, my hand trembles, hot tears blur the writing on
this parchment. And as I look up through the open doorway to
where the limitless horizon lies beyond Rome's seven hills, I see
stretched out before me the long vista of years throughout which
my heart will be for ever weaving with threads of longing and of
sorrow the tether which binds undying memory to thee."

Her hands, which held the roll of parchment, dropped down upon her lap.
Her eyes too were dim and the hot tears fell from them one by one. A
sadness that was in no way bitter and yet was immeasurable as death had
filled her entire being as she read.

Slowly she laid the parchment in the bosom of her tunic, then, like one
who walks in sleep, she rose and crossed the studio, her hand--white and
slightly quivering--pushed back the heavy door that masked the inner
room. Silently it swung upon its hinges, disclosing the sanctum where
yesterday the stricken hero had lain helpless and sick.

The couch had not been touched since he had lain on it. It still bore
the imprint of the massive figure as it lay inert in the embrace of
drugged sleep. The pillow only had been smoothed out as if by a loving
hand, and as Dea Flavia came nearer to it she saw that a small object
had been laid there, as if reverently, right in the centre.

The tears in her eyes obscured her vision momentarily, but when they
fell one by one down her cheeks, she saw a little more clearly, and
having approached the couch she took up the small object that lay there
upon the pillow.

It was the wooden cross which she had last seen held between the clasped
hands of the man whom she loved.

She gazed on the small symbol, and gazed, even though the tears gathered
thick and fast in her eyes and the image that she saw was scarce
discernible as it rested in her hand.

How puzzled she had been two nights ago when she stole softly into this
room and saw him kneeling here beside the couch, clasping this wooden
symbol between his fingers--intertwined in a gesture of passionate
prayer. She had been puzzled because his actions of the day before had
seemed incomprehensible to her: his attitude to my lord Hortensius
Martius, an enemy whose life he saved at risk of his own, his loyalty
to the Caesar whom everyone abhorred!

All this had puzzled her then, but how infinitely more profound was that
puzzle now. A riddle more m