When I reached the place where I had left the beautiful stranger she was not there. Unutterable horror seized me. Had I, after all, left her too near that crumbling edge? I groaned aloud and turned to run down. A feeble voice stopped me--a whisper rather than a voice, for there was hardly strength to speak,-- "Who is there?" "Oh, thank God," I exclaimed, "you are not dead!" and I sprang to the next of the cross corridors, from which the sound had come. She was there, sitting up, leaning against the wall. She looked almost more terrified than relieved when she saw me. I bathed her face and hands in the water, and told her how I had found her insensible, and had drawn her away from the outer edge before I had gone for the water. She did not speak for some moments, but looked at me earnestly and steadily, with tears standing in her large blue eyes. Then she said, "I did not know that any one but myself ever came to the Coliseum so early. I thought I should die here alone; and Robert was not willing I should come." "I owe you my life," she added, bursting into hysterical crying. Then in a few moments she half laughed, as if at some droll thought, and said, "But how could you drag me? You are not nearly so big as I am. The angels must have helped you;" and holding up the poor crushed asphodels, she went on: "As soon as I came to myself, I saw the asphodels in my hand, and I said, 'Asphodel for burial;' and tried to throw them away, so that if Robert came he would not find me dead with them in my hand, for only yesterday he said to me, 'Please never pick an asphodel--I can't bear to see you touch one.'" Slowly I soothed her and she recovered her color and strength. The owner of the basin, followed by a half-dozen chattering vetturini, had climbed up to us, but we had peremptorily sent them all away. It was evident that she was not seriously hurt. The terror, rather than the fall, had caused her fainting. It was probably a sudden dizziness which had come as she drew back and turned after picking the flowers. Had she fallen in the act of picking them she must have been dashed to the ground below. At the end of an hour she was so nearly well, that she walked slowly down the long stairs, leaning on my arm, and taking frequent rests by the way. I was about to beckon to one of the vetturini, when she said, "Oh no! my own carriage is near here, up by the gate of the Palace of the Cæsars. I rambled on, without thinking at first of coming to the Coliseum: it will do me good to walk back; every moment of the air makes me feel better."