Their steps died away.
A Roman tutor, with some of his pupils, passed by.
"But, magister," said the youngest boy, "I thought you were going to the church? Why do you take us out in this storm?"
"I only spoke of church to get you out of the house. Church! I tell you, the fewer roofs and walls about one the better. I am going to take you out into the great meadow in the suburbs. I wish it would rain. If Vesuvius were near, as it is in my native place, I should think that Ravenna was about to become a second Herculaneum. I know such an atmosphere as we have to-day--it is dangerous."
And they went on.
"Wilt thou not come with me, mistress?" the man in the steel cap asked the Gothic woman. "I must try to find Dromon, else we shall get no lodging tonight. I cannot leave thee alone in the dark. Thou hast no light with thee."
"Dost thou not see that the lightning never ceases? Go; I will come afterwards. I have still something to think of--and to pray for."
And the woman remained alone.
She pressed both hands against her bosom and looked up at the black sky; her lips moved slightly.
Just then it seemed to her as if, in the high outer galleries, passages, and upper rooms of the mighty wooden edifice which towered in a dark mass opposite, a light came and went, wandering up and down. She thought it must have been a deception caused by the lightning, for any open light would have been extinguished by the wind. But no; it really was a light, for its appearance and disappearance alternated at regular intervals, as if the person carrying it were hurrying along the galleries and passing behind the pillars and supports.