ad
taken her to his heart, to-night would not come near her pillow; so much
to agitate and disturb her soul had taken place during the day.

She had often before now been a silent spectator of the wild rejoicings
of the musician's family, and she had always thought of these
light-hearted creatures as spendthrifts who waste all their substance in
a few days to linger afterwards through years of privation and
repentance. Troubled, as she could not fail to be, as to the eternal
salvation of these lost souls, though happy in her own faith, she had
constantly turned for peace to her Saviour and always found it; but
to-night it was not so, for a new and unexpected temptation had sprung up
for her in the house of Porphyrius.

She had heard Gorgo sing again, and joined her own voice with hers.
Dirges, yearning hymns, passionate outpourings in praise of the mighty
and beautiful divinity had filled her ear and stirred her soul with an
ecstatic thrill, although she knew that they, were the composition of
heathen poets and had first been sung to the harmony of lutes by
reprobate idolaters. And yet, and yet they had touched her heart, and
moved her soul to rapture, and filled her eyes with tears.

She could not but confess to herself that she could have given no purer,
sweeter, or loftier expression to her own woes, thankfulness,
aspirations, and hopes of ever lasting life and glory, than this gifted
creature had given to the utterance of her idolatry. Surprise, unrest,
nay, some little jealousy had been mingled with her delight at Gorgo's
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
fo