th outrageous
reproaches, and when at last, weary of such treatment, she refused to
quit the house, he obliged her nevertheless to accompany him as often as
the Legate Quintillus desired it. The legate was his superior-officer,
and he sent her every day some present or flowers.

Up to this time she had borne with him, and had tried to excuse him,
and to think herself answerable for much of what she endured. But at
last--about ten months after her marriage--something occurred between
her and Phoebicius--something which stood like a wall of brass between
him and her; and as this something had led to his banishment to the
remote oasis, and to his degradation to the rank of captain of a
miserable maniple, instead of his obtaining his hoped for promotion, he
began to torment her systematically while she tried to protect herself
by icy coldness, so that at last it came to this, that the husband, for
whom she felt nothing but contempt, had no more influence on her life,
than some physical pain which a sick man is doomed to endure all through
his existence.

In his presence she was silent, defiant, and repellent, but as soon
as he quitted her, her innate, warm-hearted kindliness and child-like
merriment woke up to new life, and their fairest blossoms opened out
in the senator's house among the little troop who amply repaid her love
with theirs.

Phoebicius belonged to the worshippers of Mithras, and he often fasted
in his honor to the point of exhaustion, while on the other hand he
frequently drank with his boon companions, at the feasts of the god,
till he was in a state of insensibility.

Here even, in Mount Sinai, he had prepared a grotto for the feast of
Mithras, had gathered together a few companions in his faith, and when
it happened that he remained out all day and all night, and came home
paler even than usual, she well knew where he had been. Just now she
vividly pictured to herself the person of this man with his eyes, that
now were dull with sleep and now glowed with rage, and she asked herself
whether it were indeed possible that of her own free will she had chosen
to become his wife. Her bosom heaved with quicker breathing as she
remembered the ignominy he had subjected her to in Rome, and she
clenched her small hands. At this instant the little dog sprang from her
lap and flew barking to the window-sill; she was easily startled,
and she drew on her morning-gown, which had slipped from her white
shoulders; the