me comfort: Olympius was at the Serapeunt and had
begun to fortify the temple, and garrison it with a strong force of
adherents.

Damia had definitively given up all hope, and hardly heeded this part
of his story, while on Gorgo's mind it had a startling effect. She
loved Constantine with all the fervor of a first, and only, and
long-suppressed passion; she had repented long since of her little fit
of suspicion, and it would have cost her no perceptible effort to
humble her pride, to fly to him and pray for forgiveness. But she could
not--dared not--now, when everything was at stake, renounce her fidelity
to the gods for whose sake she had let him leave her in anger, and to
whom she must cling, cost what it might; that would be a base desertion.
If Olympius were to triumph in the struggle she might go to her lover
and say: "Do you remain a Christian, and leave me the creed of my
childhood, or else open my heart to yours." But, as matters now stood,
her first duty was to quell her passion and retrain faithful to the end,
even though the cause were lost. She was Greek to the backbone; she knew
it and felt it, and yet her eye had sparkled with pride as she heard
the steward's tale, and she seemed to see Constantine at the head of his
horsemen, rushing upon the heathen and driving them to the four winds
like a flock of sheep. Her heart beat high for the foe rather than
for her hapless friends--these were but bruised reeds--those were the
incarnation of victorious strength.

These divided feelings worried and vexed her; but her grandmother
had suggested a way of reconciling them. Where he commanded victory
followed, and if the Christians should succeed in destroying the image
of Serapis the joints of the world would crack and the earth would
crumble away. She herself was familiar with the traditions and the
oracles which with one consent foretold this doom; she had learnt them
as an infant from her nurse, from the slave-women at the loom, from
learned men and astute philosophers--and to her the horrible prophecy
meant a solution of every contradiction and the bitter-sweet hope of
perishing with the man she loved.

As it grew dark another person appeared: the Moschosphragist--[The
examiner of sacrificed animals]--from the temple of Serapis, who, every
day, examined the entrails of a slaughtered beast for Damia; to-day the
augury had been so bad that he was almost afraid of revealing it. But
the old woman, sure of it before