A resolution was carried by a majority in the Council that it was not needful to enter into these motives. Besides, at the close of thirty years’ devotion to the service of the temple, by an old statute, the priestesses were free to depart if so they desired. Very few lived to avail themselves of the freedom which was thus granted to them. And those who did survive had become so accustomed to the routine of the Vestals’ House that they showed no anxiety to leave its shelter in their declining years. The privileges, too, of the Vestals were very highly prized, and of late years their table had been luxuriously appointed, and their life had been one of ease and refinement, so that the change to a more ordinary manner of living would have been far from acceptable to many who had severed the ties of earlier years, and who would have found themselves adrift in the great city, outside the walls of the Vestals’ House. CHAPTER XV. THE CROWN OF LIGHT. It was the dawn of the third day when Hermione was awoke from a light slumber by Hyacintha’s voice. “The watch is nearly over,” she said; “the day is near. I have been in the temple all night; how came I hither?” “Nay, dearest lady,” Hermione said; “you have been sleeping on your couch, and I have watched----” “I thought I had been in the temple, and I saw there my brother and Ebba, and myself a little child again. There was a sudden great light, and it shone on them--and Claudius, good Claudius!” Hermione thought she was wandering a little, and beckoned to one of the attendants to bring her a reviving draught. The Vestal Maxima smiled, saying, “I saw them, and I followed them up a golden stair to the place where the stars were shining. Casca was reading from a book the words of Socrates: ‘The soul is most certainly immortal, and cannot perish; it will exist in the unseen world, taking nothing with it but the discipline it has gained here.’ I know the words well, and I cannot be mistaken. They were spoken by my brother’s voice--Casca’s voice. Whether it were a vision I know not, or a reality I cannot tell, but there is in me a certainty that Casca is near.” It not unfrequently happens that the spiritual perceptions of those who are nearing the unseen world are quickened. However that may be, Hermione was startled a few hours later by a hasty summons to the atrium, where she was told some strangers were inquiring for the Vestal Maxima. A pale ethereal looking man, in a long scholar’s robe, was holding a lovely child of five or six years old by the hand, around whom an admiring group of white-robed Vestals clustered. Behind stood a plainly-dressed, elderly woman, and a man in the full accoutrements of a Roman officer by her side.