She saw herself a fugitive, hiding on the mountain-sides of yonder snow-capped Tmolus, where many others of the Christians had already fled for safety from the cruel fate in store for them.
She saw herself a wanderer, an outcast, pursued to the death. Which should it be? High Priestess of Diana, clothed with mystery, strong in power, standing on the loftiest peak of fame, with a nation at her feet, and the issues of life and death in her hands; or a child in the new kingdom of love and peace?
A thousand spirit-voices sang chorus to her soul, bidding her beware, now flowing with soft cadence in winning measure and tones of entreaty, now rising in one vast tumultuous threatening as if they would break the earth asunder. She stood unawed, listening; then cried:
'Stand back! Saronia is a free spirit! What are ye? If I seek the truth, what spirit amongst you dare bar the way to a soul which floats upwards to the source of its being? Nay, none of you! Not even the son of the morning who fell from heaven!'
Day after day hung wearily on Saronia; she was of such nature as no half-measure would satisfy. She was awakening from the mist of ages. She had heard of a great spiritual life which was without alloy, where the spirit evolved more and more into the likeness of the great First Cause, and her mind broadened out to seek the fuller light.
When the nightingale sang to its mate and the sweet-scented flowers gave perfume in exchange for the earth-born dew, when the winds of the night lay cradled, when the voice of the toiler was still, and the sheen of the star of the west melted into the cold, gray sea, when the city slept on in the darkness, Saronia looked out to the mountains, the mountains which sheltered the exiles, the fugitive followers of God.
'Twas death before death to the priestess; 'twas the death of the old faith, the birth of the new—the new one awakening the soul from its slumber, refining the spirit, remoulding her nature, and bringing together the Christ and His loved one.
The night-winds leapt from their slumbers, and shrieked like a soul in pain, trampled the flowers in their fury, flew round the pine-clad mountains, circled and circled again, till the girl was entombed in a whirlwind, a whirlwind with centre of calm.