Afterwards she gave a little sealed packet to Ethne. It contained a precious jewelled clasp of oriental workmanship from Miriam, with the words from the old Hebrew marriage ritual written in Latin folded round it—“Make these two to rejoice with joy according to the joyousness which Thou gavest to the work of Thy hands in the Garden of Eden of old.” Before long Ethne and Marius went away to the country house, now so dear and familiar to her, amongst the Sabine hills; whilst Baithene and Lucia remained to be the son and daughter of Fabricius and Damaris in the old palace on the Aventine. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIII. FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS ON THE SABINE HILLS. Thus Ethne went back to be the light and joy of the home among the mountains, which had grown so familiar to her; but she came with a new light and a new joy. The gaiety and buoyancy of her race, and the free, imaginative delight in nature were still there, but there was added the tender grace of matronhood; the old world and the new, the sunset and the dawn, had blended; the weight of the cares of that old world of Marius were on her, as the power of her new hope was on him. “It is _conjugium_,” they said, “no mere (_contubernium_) dwelling together, but _working under a yoke_ together; His yoke which is fruitful, His burden which makes us run the swifter, as ‘the burden of wings to a bird, or sails to a ship.’” For always the burden of this universal slavery, which was crushing the Roman world, weighed on Ethne; denying as it did the sanctity of married life to the toiling many, and making unholy life so terribly easy to the luxurious few; degrading all, in fact, to one level of evil, because virtually rejecting the sacred equality of a common humanity. The Christian Church had indeed begun her long battle with this evil as with all others; but to Ethne, coming from a social life of another kind, entangled no doubt with its own difficulties and wrongs, but not debased with these, it seemed as if the way made hitherto through all these centuries of Christianity was very little. “It was written so long ago,” she said, “that tender letter of Paul the Apostle interceding for a runaway slave. Not even a good slave, but ‘unprofitable.’ Yet the great Apostle calls him ‘My own son in the faith,’ and says to his master—‘Receive him not as a slave, but a brother beloved.’ To the master, think, four hundred years ago! And what master acknowledges this now?” “Scarcely even our own Leo,” Marius said. “Does not this perplex thee in Leo?” “Why should it?” she said. “Does not Leo himself say to God continually, ‘We can do nothing good without Thee’? I suppose if he finds by and by that he has made a mistake, he will say in his humility, as he would say now if he saw it, ‘I must have done that without Thee.’ Besides, beloved, it is not so easy, I know, for him or for you, or for any of us, even to ‘_think_ the thing that is rightful,’ much less to do it.”