r lips in sorrow and gratitude to the thin hand whose
caresses she had been wont to accept as a mere matter of course. How
cold and heavy it was! She shivered and dropped it, and the large rings
on the fingers rattled on the wooden frame of the couch. There was no
hope; she understood that her friend and mother was indeed dead and
silent forever.

Deep and bitter grief overwhelmed her completely, with the sense of
abandoned loneliness, the humiliating feeling of helplessness against
a brutal power that marches on, scorning humanity, as a warrior treads
down the grass and flowers in his path. She fell on her knees by the
corpse, sobbing passionately, and crying like an indignant child when a
stronger companion has robbed it of some precious possession. She wept
with rage at her own impotence; and her tears flowed faster and faster
as she more fully realized how lonely she was, and what a blow this must
be to her father. In this hour no pleasant reminiscences of past family
happiness came to infuse a drop of sweetness into the bitterness of her
grief. Only one reflection brought her any comfort, and that was the
thought that the grave which had yawned already for her grandmother
would soon, very soon, open for herself and all living souls. On the
table, close at hand, lay the evidence of their impending doom, and
a longing for that end gradually took complete possession of her,
excluding every other feeling. Thinking of this she rose from her knees
and ceased to weep.

When, presently, her waiting-woman should return, she was resolved to
leave the house at once; she could not bear to stay; her feelings and
duty alike indicated the place where she might find the last hour's
happiness that she expected or desired of life. Her father must learn
from herself, and not from a stranger, of the loss that had befallen
them, and she knew that he was in the Serapeum--on the very spot where
she might hope next morning to meet Constantine. It would be her lover's
duty to open the gate to destruction, and she would be there to pass
through it at his side.

She waited a long, long time, but at last there was a noise on the
stairs. That was her nurse's step, but she was not alone. Had she
brought the leech and the exorciser? The door opened and the old steward
came in, carrying a three-branched lamp; then followed the slave-woman,
and then--her heart stood still then came Constantine and his mother.

Gorgo, pale and speechless, recei