'Ah, now I know, and will not betray! Sanctuary! Thou seekest sanctuary, and thou shalt have it if I can aid thee; but no time is to be lost. Rush on as if thy life hung on a single thread. Turn to the right, pass the Stadium, wind quickly around the hill Pion, and thou shalt see the Temple bathed in glorious light, and close to it the sacred grove; but I fear the hour has passed to gain access, and the planet Saturn rules. Hide thee among the trees to-night, and when the sun's first rays appear haste thee to thy refuge. That hour is the hour of Jupiter, the next is that of the Sun; thou shalt prevail, and when thou flourisheth, remember me.'
She moved away, and stealing around the hill with its great Acropolis and fortress walls of iron brick, gained the sacred port, at the head of which, standing broadly against the dying day, appeared the mighty Temple—that Temple which she had so often gazed on from Venusta's home.
It was not far away, but she could not reach it in time to claim security that day. If she ran she would be suspected, and her feet seemed weighted with sandals of lead.
She passed the smaller temples, saw the great ships with gorgeous sails and swinging pendants pass up and down the sacred way, and heard the chant of evening song float forth from many a shrine. Still, on she went, footsore and weary, to find, alas! the door of her asylum closed; then, gazing for a moment at the mighty structure within the parabolus walls, she uttered a faint cry and burst into a flood of tears. Nothing could she do but fly to the grove and pass the night there, and, creeping stealthily away, she moved towards the pines and cypress-trees.
That night there raged a storm. The great clouds in wild masses sailed across the sky like leviathans in the blue-tinted darkness of ocean depths. No moon nor star. The mighty winds swayed the trees, and bent the stoutest of them like reeds. Saronia crouched beneath a giant pine, whose summit seemed to pierce the sky. Faint and shivering, she drew her garments closely around her and fell asleep, only to be awakened by the thunderings which seemed to break the universe in twain with echoes like the voices of the gods in combat. A lightning flash flew down like a haunted fiend and blasted her tree from top to base, but it hurt her not.
And after hours had passed, and the furious winds had sailed out over the deep, the rains descended and drenched her flimsy garment. The stormy winds sank down to a melancholy wail, and played their dirge amongst the branches of the cluster-pine, and the dawn came up from the east and struggled between the dark-green foliage.
Saronia arose and staggered through the long wet grass, heeding not the masses of yellow iris or the flaming poppies. When she arrived at the confines of the grove the light had broken through the gray, and soon she saw the sun, and knew it was her hour.
On she went, with her thin brown garments clinging to her lovely form. For a moment, like a thief, she hung around the entrance gate, and with a wild convulsive moan passed within—to sanctuary!
When the priests went by they saw the fallen form, and thought her dead. They raised her tenderly and led her away.