of promise--of feeling and of
thought.

Her lover henceforth was no longer her enemy; and as the tumult of the
struggle by the breach fell on her ear, she could think with joy of
his victorious arms. She felt that this was the purer, the nobler, the
better cause; and she rejoiced in the love of which he had spoken as the
support and the stay of their future life together--as sheltering them
like a tower of strength and a mighty refuge. Compared with that love
all that she had hitherto held dear or indispensable as gracing life,
now seemed vain and worthless; and as she looked at her father's still
face, and remembered how he had lived and what he had suffered, she
applied those words of Paul which Constantine had spoken at their
meeting after his return, to him, too; and her heart overflowed with
affection towards her hapless parent. She knew full well the meaning of
the deep lines that marked his lips and brow; for Porphyrius had never
made any secret of his distress and vexation whenever he found himself
compelled to confess a creed in which he did not honestly believe. This
great falsehood and constant duplicity, this divided allegiance to two
masters, had poisoned the existence of a man by nature truthful; and
Gorgo knew for whose sake and for what reasons he had subjected himself
to this moral martyrdom. It was a lesson to her to see him lying
there, and his look of anguish warned her to become, heart and soul,
a Christian as she felt prompted. She would confess Christ for love's
sake-aye, for love's sake; for in this hour the thing she saw most
clearly in the faith which she purposed to adopt, and of which
Constantine had so often spoken to her with affectionate enthusiasm, was
Everlasting Love.

Never in her life had she felt so much at peace, so open to all that was
good and beautiful; and yet, outside, the strife grew louder and more
furious; the Imperial tuba sounded above the battle-cry of the heathen,
and the uproar of the struggle came nearer and nearer.

The battering-ram had made a large breach in the southern wall, and,
protected by their shed, the heavy-armed infantry of the twenty-second
legion had forced their way up; but many a veteran had paid for his
rashness with his life, for the storming party had been met by a perfect
shower of arrows and javelins. Still, the great shield had turned many a
spear, and many an arrow had glanced harmless from the brazen armor and
helmets; the men that had esca