e room, describing swift, interminable spirals round her
head. She could not hear them, but she could see them, and the whirling
vortex fascinated her; she could not help turning her head to follow
their flight; she grew giddy and she was forced to try to recover her
balance.

The old woman sat huddled in her chair, her hands convulsively clutching
the arms, like a horseman whose steed has run away with him round and
round the arena; till at length, worn out by excitement and exhaustion,
she became unconscious, and sank in a heap on the ground, rigid and
apparently lifeless.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Christianity had ceased to be the creed of the poor
He spoke with pompous exaggeration
Whether man were the best or the worst of created beings

SERAPIS

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XX.

Gorgo, when she had left her grandmother, could not rest. Her lofty
calmness of demeanor had given way to a restless mood such as she had
always contemned severely in others, since she had ceased to be a
vehement child and grown to be a woman. She tried to beguile the alarm
that made her pulses beat so quickly, and the heart-sickness that ached
like a wound, by music and singing; but this only added to her torment.
The means by which she could usually recover her equanimity of mind had
lost their efficacy, and Sappho's longing hymn, which she began to sing,
had only served to bring the fervid longing of her own heart to light--to
set it, as it were, in the full glare of the sun. She had become aware
that every fibre, every nerve of her being yearned for the man she loved;
she would have thrown away her life like a hollow nut for one single hour
of perfect joy with him and in him. The faith in the old gods, the
heathen world which contained the ideal of her young soul, her
detestation of Christianity, her beautiful art--everything, in short,
that had filled the spiritual side of her life, was cast into the shade
by the one absorbing passion that possessed her soul. Every feeling,
every instinct, urged her to abandon herself entirely to her lover, and
yet she never for one instant doubted which side she would take in the
approaching conflict of the great powers that ruled the world. The last
few hours had only confirmed her conviction that the end of all things
was at hand. The world was on the eve of destruction; she foresaw that
she must perish--perish with Constantine, and that, in he