only last night again I dreamed I was whirling
in a dance with you--"

At these words all gravity and spite vanished from Miriam's eyes; she
clapped her hands and cried, "If it had only been the fact and not a
dream! Only do not be frightened again, you fool! Do you know then what
it is when the pipes sound, and the lutes tinkle, and our feet fly round
in circles as if they had wings?"

"The wings of Satan," Hermas interrupted sternly. "You are a demon, a
hardened heathen."

"So says our pious Paulus," laughed the girl.

"So say I too," cried the young man. "Who ever saw you in the assemblies
of the just? Do you pray? Do you ever praise the Lord and our Saviour?"

"And what should I praise them for?" asked Miriam. "Because I am
regarded as a foul fiend by the most pious among you perhaps?"

"But it is because you are a sinner that Heaven denies you its
blessing."

"No--no, a thousand times no!" cried Miriam. "No god has ever troubled
himself about me. And if I am not good, why should I be when nothing but
evil ever has fallen to my share? Do you know who I am and how I became
so? I was wicked, perhaps, when both my parents were slain in their
pilgrimage hither? Why, I was then no more than six years old, and what
is a child of that age? But still I very well remember that there were
many camels grazing near our house, and horses too that belonged to us,
and that on a hand that often caressed me--it was my mother's hand--a
large jewel shone. I had a black slave too that obeyed me; when she and
I did not agree I used to hang on to her grey woolly hair and beat her.
Who knows what may have become of her? I did not love her, but if I had
her now, how kind I would be to her. And now for twelve years I myself
have eaten the bread of servitude, and have kept Senator Petrus's goats,
and if I ventured to show myself at a festival among the free maidens,
they would turn me out and pull the wreath out of my hair. And am I to
be thankful? What for, I wonder? And pious? What god has taken any care
of me? Call me an evil demon--call me so! But if Petrus and your Paulus
there say that He who is up above us and who let me grow up to such a
lot is good, they tell a lie. God is cruel, and it is just like Him
to put it into your heart to throw stones and scare me away from your
well."

With these words she burst out into bitter sobs, and her features worked
with various and passionate distortion.

Hermas felt compassion for the