parkling with revived fire. "But where shall we go to--where? The soul
is divine by nature and cannot be destroyed. It must return--say, am I
right or wrong?--It will return to its first fount and cause; for like
attracts and absorbs like, and thus our deification, our union with the
god will be accomplished."

"I believe it--I am sure of it!" replied Gorgo with conviction.

"You are sure of it?" retorted the old woman. "But I am not. For our
clearest knowledge is but guesswork when it is not based on numbers.
Nothing is proved or provable but by numbers, but they are surer than the
rocks in the sea; that is why I believe in our coming doom, for, on those
tablets, we have calculated it to a certainty. But who can calculate
evidence of the future fate of the soul? If, indeed, the old order should
not pass away--if the depths should remain below and the empyrean still
keep its place above--then, to be sure, your studies would not be in
vain; for then your soul, which is fixed on spiritual, supernatural and
sublime conceptions, would be drawn upwards to the great Intelligence of
which it is the offspring, to the very god, and become one with
him--absorbed into him, as the rain-drop fallen from a cloud rises again
and is reunited to its parent vapor. Then--for there may be a
metempsychosis--your songful spirit might revive to inform a nightingale,
then . . ."

Damia paused; and gazed upwards as if in ecstasy, and it was not till a
few minutes later that she went on, with a changed expression in her
face: "Then my son's widow, Mary, would be hatched out of a serpent's egg
and would creep a writhing asp. . . . Great gods! the ravens! What can
they mean? They come again. Air, air! Wine! I cannot--I am choking--take
it away!--To-morrow--to-day. . . . Everything is going; do you see--do
you feel? It is all black--no, red; and now black again. Everything is
sinking; hold me, save me; the floor is going from under me.--Where is
Porphyrius? Where is my son?--My feet are so cold; rub them. It is the
water! rising--it is up to my knees. I am sinking--help! save me! help!"
The dying woman fought with her arms as if she were drowning; her cries
for help grew fainter, her head drooped on her laboring chest, and in a
few minutes she had breathed her last in her grandchild's arms, and her
restless, suffering soul was free.

Never before had Gorgo seen death. She could not persuade herself that
the heart which had been so cold for other