“We did tend him carefully, and cheered his last days with the warmth of a love we might well bear one who had been so closely bound up in life with my father Casca and my aunt the Vestal Maxima. “Claudius spoke much of the past, but little of the present. The farther off the scene, the clearer the vision. My father, always absorbed in his manuscript, would sometimes raise his head and smile, as Claudius spoke of Verulam, and the small upper chamber there and little Hyacintha and her hair shining under the light of the silver lamp which hung from the roof. Then of Ebba and her conversion to the faith of the Christian; his own vehement and angry persecution of the Christians, and of the dark dungeon into which he entered, bearing the dead Jewish girl in his arms. “All this was clear before him, but of the later days at Rome he said little, and that little was confused. He loved to hear me read the Gospels, and the vision of the great Apostle of Love at Patmos, I would repeat again and again. He spoke to me of Heraclitus, and said he was worthy of my love, if my father consented, but father, dear father, held back a little. He seemed unable to give me up, even to Heraclitus. “It was almost the last words that passed dear Claudius’s lips--‘Give Hyacintha to the young Heraclitus’--for when he lay dying, Claudius ever called me by my full name. He would gaze at me with dreamy eyes, and said, though I was so high above him he loved me still. “He was thinking of the other Hyacintha, no doubt. “He departed in peace; and then, within a month, dear Anna followed him. Ah, Hermione! she died in the Faith, and she has left behind her the memory of true service, which will never pass away. “My father said no word on the subject nearest my heart. And Heraclitus, brave and true, and noble, said he would not press an old man unduly, for there was time before us; we were both so young. “But it happened one day that another suitor came to my father, and asked his leave to marry me. I hated this man, though he is one of the richest in all Alexandria. My father put him off with the excuse that he could not spare me, and that I was very young, but he did not acknowledge what was indeed the truth, that in my secret heart I was bound to Heraclitus. “My father, ever quiet, and gentle, and courteous, can scarcely think of others as less so than himself, and he was perhaps not sufficiently firm in his refusal. Be that as it may, I was walking with my attendant, Portia, in the Museum gardens one evening, with a book in my hand, when this hateful man accosted me. He said at first all manner of smooth and flattering things, and then when I turned away, he grew angry, and seized my arm. I was frightened, and struggling to get away, called for help. Help was near. With one blow Heraclitus had felled the man to the ground, and, leaving him there, bore me in his arms to my father.