All this while he had remained numb and silent. He knew even when first her hand touched his that God had ended his sorrow and taken his aching soul into His keeping at last. But for the moment he thought that sweet death had kissed his eyelids and that this was the first taste of paradise. Darkness was closing in around them both; he could scarcely distinguish her features, but it seemed to him as if glory shone out of her eyes, glory so radiant that it illumined the darkness and pierced the walls of the night.
"Is it thou?" he murmured. "Oh God! have pity on me! Her image, her sweet image, allow it to fade from my mind ere my brain becomes a traitor to Thee!"
"'Tis not a vision, dear heart," she whispered softly, "'tis not a dream. It is I, Dea Flavia, whom thou didst call the beloved of thy heart. I came because I loved thee and because here on this spot I would learn from thee the mysteries of thy God."
"Is it thou? And hast thou come to me from heaven?"
"No, dear heart, only from far-off Rome. And I have come to thee, to be with thee and to follow thee wherever thou wilt lead me."
"Yet will my wanderings lead me far," he said, "my Lord has called and I must go."
"Then will I go with thee," she said.
"To far-off lands, dear heart, to speak the Word of God to those who heard it not."
"I will go with thee," she reiterated simply.
"To far-off lands whence I came, a sea-girt land which once was mine own. My fathers lived there. I would go back and tell my people of all that I saw here on Calvary seven years ago."