“Here I will leave you,” said the chamberlain. “Two slave-girls await your commands in the next room.” He pointed to a heavy gold-fringed curtain. “Here you are absolute mistress; there is nothing to remind you that you are a captive, but the step of the guard at your door, if you should happen to hear it. And--I may add--it rests with yourself to cast off even these light fetters, as soon as you will. Farewell--fair Cornelia. I shall often allow myself the honor of enquiring as to your needs or wishes.” He bowed low and went out; Cornelia could hear him speaking a few words to the guard outside, and then his steps died away in the labyrinth of passages. Cornelia, fairly exhausted, sank upon a seat and rested her head on her hand. Her eyes slowly filled with scalding tears, that gathered and rolled down her cheeks. To what straits had she been brought! Her lover in a prison and devoted to certain death--she herself offered the choice of the last conceivable disgrace, or of sharing his fate. Of what use was it to hope? If Quintus could resist the attack of her besieging, imploring love, it was only too certain that his delusions had overthrown his mind. She abandoned herself unresistingly to her crushing grief--but suddenly she started up. She remembered where she was; she realized all the hideous significance of this transfer, which the unsuspecting Flamen had accepted as an unqualified favor. She looked round her, and the sneering face of the tyrant seemed to leer at her through the elegance of the room. A sense of unutterable desertion came over her, and with her head thrown back and her arms flung up as if in desperate supplication, she gazed at the blue autumn sky which looked down upon her, pale and remote, through the round skylight. “Ah, miserable fate!” she cried, clenching her fists. “Why are you so empty and cold, ye skyey spaces? Why does no heart dwell beyond you, that can feel for us below--no merciful spirit, that can understand what crushes our souls? Oh Isis! Isis! With what fervor have I not besought Thy favor!--and if Thou Art--if, anything resembling Thee exists beyond the stars!--but no; if Thou wert Isis, who should fear Thee more than Thy priest? And he--he despises and desecrates Thee. It is an invention of the brain, an illusion, a fable; and in my quaking heart all is wretched and hopeless enough without that fable.” She ceased to look upwards, her gaze fell, and she fixed her eyes on the floor. “There is none,” she said, with dull conviction. “No help--but in Bryonia’s potion.” She paced the room, and her steps fell silently on the thick, soft rugs. “A gilded cage indeed!” she muttered, looking round her. Then she went to the door-way, and raised the curtain. Two handsome slave-girls were lying on fine panther skins; they seemed to be sleeping, but at the rustle of the curtain they started up.