consented to act the part of the Goddess of
Love, and who was betrothed to Amal, the leader of the band of Goths. He
rushed down through the dense mass of spectators, leaped the balustrade
into the orchestra below, and tore across to the foot of the stage.

"Pelagia! Sister! My sister! Have mercy on me! On yourself! I will hide
you! Save you! We will flee together out of this infernal place! I am
your brother! Come!"

She looked at him one moment with wide, wild eyes. The truth flashed on
her. And she sprang from the platform into his arms, and then, covering
her face with both her hands, sank down among the bloodstained sand.

A yell ran along the vast circle. Philammon was hurried away by the
attendants, and Pelagia, her face still hidden by her hands, walked
slowly away and vanished among the palms at the back of the stage. A
cloud, whether of disgust or disappointment, now hung upon every brow,
and there was open murmuring at the cruelty and heathenry of the show.
Hypatia was utterly unnerved. Orestes alone rose to the crisis.

In a well-studied oration he declared that Heraclian the African was
conquerer of Rome, and a roar of hired applause supported him. Then the
prefect of the guards encouraged the city authorities to salute Orestes
as emperor, and Hypatia, amid shouts of her aristocratic scholars, rose
and knelt before him, writhing inwardly with shame and despair.

At the same moment a monk's voice shouted from the highest tiers in the
theatre, "It is false! False! You are tricked! Heraclian was utterly
routed; Cyril has known it, every Jew has known it, for a week past. So
perish all the enemies of the Lord, caught in their own snare!"

For a minute an awful silence fell on all who heard; and then arose a
tumult, which Orestes in vain attempted to subdue. The would-be emperor
summoned his guards around him and Hypatia, and made his way out as best
he could, while the multitude melted away like snow before the rain, to
find every church placarded by Cyril with the particulars of Heraclian's
ruin.

Two days later, when Hypatia went to give her farewell lecture to her
pupils--for all hope was dead--a mob of monks and their followers seized
her, dragged her into the church of the Caesareum, and there, before the
great, still figure of Christ, Peter struck her down, and the mob tore
her limb from limb.

_IV.--Back to the Desert_

Philammon had done his best, struggling in vain, to pierce the dense
ma