surrounded by crowds, among which, not
knowing the reason himself, he began to look for Petronius, and was
astonished not to find him. The bright light from the chimney, at which
there was no one at that time, brought him completely to his senses.
Olive sticks were burning slowly under the rosy ashes; but the splinters
of pine, which evidently had been put there some moments before, shot
up a bright flame, and in the light of this, Vinicius saw Lygia, sitting
not far from his bedside.

The sight of her touched him to the depth of his soul. He remembered
that she had spent the night before in Ostrianum, and had busied herself
the whole day in nursing him, and now when all had gone to rest, she was
the only one watching. It was easy to divine that she must be wearied,
for while sitting motionless her eyes were closed. Vinicius knew not
whether she was sleeping or sunk in thought. He looked at her profile,
at her drooping lashes, at her hands lying on her knees; and in his
pagan head the idea began to hatch with difficulty that at the side of
naked beauty, confident, and proud of Greek and Roman symmetry, there
is another in the world, new, immensely pure, in which a soul has its
dwelling.

He could not bring himself so far as to call it Christian, but,
thinking of Lygia, he could not separate her from the religion which she
confessed. He understood, even, that if all the others had gone to rest,
and she alone were watching, she whom he had injured, it was because her
religion commanded her to watch. But that thought, which filled him with
wonder for the religion, was disagreeable to him. He would rather that
Lygia acted thus out of love for him, his face, his eyes, his statuesque
form,--in a word for reasons because of which more than once snow-white
Grecian and Roman arms had been wound around his neck.

Still he felt all at once, that, were she like other women, something
would be lacking in her. He was amazed, and knew not what was happening
in him; for he saw that new feelings of some kind were rising in him,
new likings, strange to the world in which he had lived hitherto.

She opened her eyes then, and, seeing that Vinicius was gazing at her,
she approached him and said,--"I am with thee."

"I saw thy soul in a dream," replied he.

Chapter XXVI

NEXT morning he woke up weak, but with a cool head and free of fever. It
seemed to him that a whispered conversation had roused him; but when
he opened his e