, which were answered with equal friendliness, for the
Gaulish lady, who never overlooked even the humblest, was dear to them
all. She took in the night-air with deep-drawn breaths, and looked up
contentedly at the moon, for she was well content with herself.

When Hermas had swung himself up into her room, she had started back in
alarm; he had seized her hand and pressed his burning lips to her arm,
and she let him do it, for she was overcome with strange bewilderment.

Then she heard Dame Dorothea calling out, "Directly, directly, I will
only say good night first to the children." These simple words,
uttered in Dorothea's voice, had a magical effect on the warm-hearted
woman--badly used and suspected as she was, and yet so well formed for
happiness, love and peace. When her husband had locked her in, taking
even her slave with him, at first she had raved, wept, meditated revenge
and flight, and at last, quite broken down, had seated herself by
the window in silent thought of her beautiful home, her brothers and
sisters, and the dark olive groves of Arelas.

Then Hermas appeared. It had not escaped her that the young anchorite
passionately admired her, and she was not displeased, for she liked him,
and the confusion with which he had been overcome at the sight of her
flattered her and seemed to her doubly precious because she knew that
the hermit in his sheepskin, on whom she had bestowed a gift of wine,
was in fact a young man of distinguished rank. And how truly to be
pitied was the poor boy, who had had his youth spoilt by a stern father.
A woman easily bestows some tender feeling on the man that she pities;
perhaps because she is grateful to him for the pleasure of feeling
herself the stronger, and because through him and his suffering she
finds gratification for the noblest happiness of a woman's heart--that
of giving tender and helpful care; women's hands are softer than ours.
In men's hearts love is commonly extinguished when pity begins,
while admiration acts like sunshine on the budding plant of a woman's
inclination, and pity is the glory which radiates from her heart.

Neither admiration nor pity, however, would have been needed to induce
Sirona to call Hermas to her window; she felt so unhappy and lonely,
that any one must have seemed welcome from whom she might look for a
friendly and encouraging word to revive her deeply wounded self-respect.
And there came the young anchorite, who forgot himself and ev