me dried up shrub of the desert, silvery
in the pale moonlight, she fancied she saw behind it the face of a
murderer.

The skeletons of fallen beasts standing up out of the dust, and the
bleached jawbones of camels and asses, which shone much whiter than the
desert-sand on which they lay, seemed to have come to life and motion,
and made her think of the tiger-teeth of the bearded ruffian.

The clouds of dust driven in her face by the warm west wind, which had
risen higher, increased her alarm, for they were mingled with the colder
current of the night-breeze; and again and again she felt as if spirits
were driving her onwards with their hot breath, and stroking her face
with their cold fingers. Every thing that her senses perceived was
transformed by her heated imagination into a fearful something; but more
fearful and more horrible than anything she heard, than any phantom that
met her eye in the ghastly moonlight, were her own thoughts of what
was to be done now, in the immediate future--of the fearful fate that
threatened the Roman and Irene; and she was incapable of separating one
from the other in her mind, for one influence alone possessed her,
heart and soul: dread, dread; the same boundless, nameless, deadly
dread--alike of mortal peril and irremediable shame, and of the airiest
phantoms and the merest nothings.

A large black cloud floated slowly across the moon and utter darkness
hid everything around, even the undefined forms which her imagination
had turned to images of dread. She was forced to moderate her pace, and
find her way, feeling each step; and just as to a child some hideous
form that looms before him vanishes into nothingness when he covers his
eyes with his hand, so the profound darkness which now enveloped her,
suddenly released her soul from a hundred imaginary terrors.

She stood still, drew a deep breath, collected the whole natural force
of her will, and asked herself what she could do to avert the horrid
issue.

Since seeing the murderers every thought of revenge, every wish to
punish the seducer with death, had vanished from her mind; one desire
alone possessed her now--that of rescuing him, the man, from the
clutches of these ravening beasts. Walking slowly onwards she repeated
to herself every word she had heard that referred to Publius and Irene
as spoken by Euergetes, Eulaeus, the recluse, and the assassins, and
recalled every step she had taken since she left the temple; thus she