me the sultry air was rent by a
blinding flash sent across the firmament from the north. There was a
hot, sluggish wind blowing from the southwest, which drove the sand
across the lake into the streets; the fine grit stung: and burnt
the face of the wanderer who hurried on with half-closed eyes and
tightly-shut lips. A deep oppression seemed to have fallen on nature and
on man; the sudden gusts of the heated breeze, the arrow-like shafts of
lightning, the weird shapes and colors of the clouds, all combined to
give a sinister, baleful and portentous aspect to this night, as though
skies and waters, earth and air were brooding over some tremendous
catastrophe.

Gorgo had thrown a veil and handkerchief round her head and followed the
priest with an aching brow and throbbing heart. When she heard a step
behind her she started-for it might be Constantine following her
up; when a gust of wind flung the stinging sand in her face, or the
storm-flash threw a lurid light on the sky, her heart stood still, for
was not this the prelude to the final crash.

She was familiar with the way they were going, but its length seemed
to have stretched tenfold. At last, however, they reached their
destination. She gave the pass-word at the gate of her father's
timber-yard and exchanged the signs agreed upon; in a few minutes she
had made her way through the piles of beams and planks that screened the
entrance to the aqueduct--a slave who knew her leading the way with a
light--and she and her companion entered the underground passage.

It was hot and close; bats, scared by the flare of the torch, fluttered
round her with a ghostly rustle, startling and disgusting her; still,
she felt less alarm here than outside; and when, as she went forward she
thought of the great temple she was coming to, of its wonderful beauty
and solemn majesty, she only cared to press onward to that refuge of
ineffable splendor where all would be peace. To die there, to perish
there with her lover, did not seem hard; nay, she felt proud to think
that she might await death in the noblest edifice ever raised to a god
by mortal hands. Here Fate might have its way; she had known the highest
joy she had ever dreamed of, and where on earth was there a sublimer
tomb than this sanctuary of the sovereign of the universe, whose
supremacy even the other gods acknowledged with trembling!

She had known the sacred halls of the temple from her childhood, and she
pictured them as