is work which
somehow seemed endless to-day; he put aside his implements, stroked back
the black hair that had fallen over his face, and removing the reed-pen
from behind his ear, stuck in a sprig of dark blue larkspur. Then
he tripped to the door, opened it, looked at the girl with the cool
impudence of a connoisseur in beauty, bowed slightly, and pointing the
way out said with airified politeness:

"Allow me!"

Agne at once obeyed and with a drooping head left the room; but the
young Egyptian stole out after her, and as soon as the door was shut he
seized her hand and said in a whisper: "If you can wait half an hour at
the bottom of the stairs, pretty one, I will take you somewhere where
you will enjoy yourself."

She had stopped to listen, and looked enquiringly into his face, for she
had no suspicion of his meaning; the young fellow, encouraged by this,
laid his hand on her shoulder and would have drawn her towards him but
that she, thrusting him from her as if he were some horrible animal,
flew down the steps as fast as her feet could carry her, and through the
courtyard back into the great entrance-hall.

Here all was, by this time, dark and still; only a few lamps lighted
the pillared space and the flare of a torch fell upon the benches
placed there for the accommodation of priests, laymen and supplicants
generally.

Utterly worn out--whether by terror or disappointment or by hunger and
fatigue she scarcely knew--she sank on a seat and buried her face in her
hands.

During her absence the wounded had been conveyed to the sick-houses;
one only was left whom they had not been able to move. He was lying on
a mattress between two of the columns at some little distance from
Agne, and the light of a lamp, standing on a medicine-chest, fell on his
handsome but bloodless features. A deaconess was kneeling at his
head and gazed in silence in the face of the dead, while old Eusebius
crouched prostrate by his side, resting his cheek on the breast of the
man whose eyes were sealed in eternal sleep. Two sounds only broke the
profound silence of the deserted hall: an occasional faint sob from the
old man and the steady step of the soldiers on guard in front of the
Bishop's palace. The widow, kneeling with clasped hands, never took her
eyes off the face of the youth, nor moved for fear of disturbing the
deacon who, as she knew, was praying--praying for the salvation of the
heathen soul snatched away before it could repe