Hypatia

of the fair wickedness of old.⁠ ⁠… It was fast. He beat upon it but no one answered. He rushed on and tried another. No one answered there. Another⁠—still silence and despair!⁠ ⁠… He rushed upstairs, hoping that from the windows above he might be able to call to the guard. The prudent soldiers had locked and barricaded the entrances to the upper floors of the whole right wing, lest the palace court should be commanded from thence. Whither now? Back⁠—and whither then? Back, round endless galleries, vaulted halls, staircases, doorways, some fast, some open, up and down, trying this way and that, losing himself at whiles in that enormous silent labyrinth. And his breath failed him, his throat was parched, his face burned as with the simoom wind, his legs were trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect, failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted; there was a spell upon him. Was it a dream? Was it all one of those hideous nightmares of endless pillars beyond pillars, stairs above stairs, rooms within rooms, changing, shifting, lengthening out forever and forever before the dreamer, narrowing, closing in on him, choking him? Was it a dream? Was he doomed to wander forever and forever in some palace of the dead, to expiate the sin which he had learnt and done therein? His brain, for the first time in his life, began to reel. He could recollect nothing but that something dreadful was to happen⁠—and that he had to prevent it, and could not.⁠ ⁠… Where was he now? In a little by-chamber.⁠ ⁠… He had talked with her there a hundred times, looking out over the Pharos and the blue Mediterranean.⁠ ⁠… What was that roar below? A sea of weltering yelling heads, thousands on thousands, down to the very beach; and from their innumerable throats one mighty war-cry⁠—“God, and the mother of God!” Cyril’s hounds were loose.⁠ ⁠… He reeled from the window, and darted frantically away again⁠ ⁠… whither, he knew not, and never knew until his dying day.

And Philammon?⁠ ⁠… Sufficient for the chapter, as for the day, is the evil thereof.

XXVIII

Woman’s Love

Pelagia had passed that night alone in sleepless sorrow, which was not diminished by her finding herself the next morning palpably a prisoner in her own house. Her girls told her that they had orders⁠—they would not say from whom⁠—to prevent her leaving her own apartments. And though some of them made the announcement with sighs and tears of condolence, yet more than one, she could see, was well inclined to make her feel that her power was over, and that there were others besides herself who might aspire to the honour of reigning favourite.

What matter to her? Whispers, sneers, and saucy answers fell on her ear unheeded. She had one idol, and she had lost it; one power, and it had failed her. In the heaven above, and in the earth beneath, was neither peace, nor help, nor hope; nothing but black, blank, stupid terror and despair. The little weak infant soul, which had just awakened in her, had been crushed and stunned in its very birth-hour; and instinctively she crept away to the roof of the tower where her apartments were, to sit and weep alone.

There she sat, hour after hour, beneath the shade of the large windsail, which served in all Alexandrian houses the double purpose of a shelter from the sun and a ventilator for the rooms below; and her eye roved carelessly over that endless sea of roofs and towers, and masts, and glittering canals, and gliding boats; but she saw none of them⁠—nothing but one beloved face, lost, lost forever.

At last a low whistle roused her from her dream. She looked up. Across the narrow lane, from one of the embrasures of the opposite house-parapet bright eyes were peering at her. She moved angrily to escape them.

The whistle was repeated, and a head rose cautiously above the parapet.⁠ ⁠… It was Miriam’s. Casting a careful look around, Pelagia went forward. What could the old woman want with her?

Miriam made interrogative signs, which Pelagia understood as asking her whether she was alone; and the moment that an answer in the negative was returned, Miriam rose, tossed over to her feet a letter weighted with a pebble, and then vanished again.

“I have watched here all day! They refused me admittance below. Beware of Wulf, of everyone. Do not stir from your chamber. There is a plot to carry you off tonight, and give you up to your brother the monk; you are betrayed; be brave!”

Pelagia read it with blanching cheek and staring eyes; and took, at least, the last part of Miriam’s advice. For walking down the stair, she passed proudly through her own rooms, and commanding back the girls who would have stayed her, with a voice and gesture at which they quailed, went straight down, the letter in her hand, to the apartment where the Amal usually spent his midday hours.

As she approached the door, she heard loud voices within.⁠ ⁠… His!⁠—yes; but Wulf’s also. Her heart failed her, and she stopped a moment to listen.⁠ ⁠… She heard Hypatia’s name; and mad with curiosity, crouched down at the lock, and hearkened to every word.

“She will not accept me, Wulf.”

“If she will not, she shall go farther and fare worse. Besides, I tell you, she is hard run. It is her last chance, and she will jump at it. The Christians are mad with her; if a storm blows up, her life is not worth⁠—that!”

“It is a pity that we have not brought her hither already.”

“It is; but we could not. We must not break with Orestes till the palace is in our hands.”

“And will it ever be in our hands, friend?”

“Certain. We were round at every picquet last night, and the very notion of an Amal’s heading them made them so eager, that we had to bribe them to be quiet rather than to rise.”

“Odin! I