'I went to the House Monitory and knocked. So stupid and weak I was, for longer and harder than I looked for had the way been, and my dread had grown so very great, that when the wicket opened I had no word to say, and just stared at the face that showed, looking to read an answer there without ever a question. I got no more sense than to say: "Of your charity pray for one Diadyomene." 'I saw startled recognition of the name. Like a coward, a fool, in sudden terror of further knowledge, I loosed the sill and turned to run in escape from it. I fell into blackness. Afterwards I was told I had fainted. 'They had me in before I came to myself. Ah! kind souls they were. A monitress knelt at either side, and one held my head. When memory came back, I looked from one to the other, and dared not ask for what must come. There was whispering apart that scared me. Then one came to me. "My child," she said, "we will pray without question if you will; yet if you may, tell us who is this Diadyomene?" I thought my senses had not come back to me. They would have let me be, but I would not have it then. "Who is she?" I said; "I do not know, I came to you to ask." "We do not know." Bewildered, I turned to the one who had opened to me. "But you know; I saw it in your face when I named her." "The name I knew, nothing more; and that I had heard but once, and my memory had let it escape." "Where had you heard it? Who knows?" I said. "On Christmas Eve a man came, a young man, fair-haired." "Christian," I said, "that was Christian." At that three faces started into an eager cluster. "Christian!" they said, "was his name Christian?" Then they told me that after night-fall he had come and named Diadyomene, and that before daybreak a woman, naked and very beautiful, had come wailing an only word, "Christian." But because of the hour of his coming I said no, it could not be he, for I had seen him too shortly before. And indeed it seemed to me past belief that any man could have come that way by night so speedily. So they gave detail: his hair was fair; his eyes grey; he was of great stature; he was unclothed, bleeding freshly, and, yes, they thought, gashed along the shoulder. "But here is a sure token," and with that they showed me that cross he had worn. "This," they said, "he unloosed from his neck."' Never a word more Lois heard of that tale, though for near a minute Rhoda carried it forward. Then looking up, she saw a face like a mask, with features strained and eyes fixed, and sprang up in terror, vainly to strive at winning from the stricken senses token of the life they locked. Was she guilty of this? Never did she know. For the few days that sad life held on till it reached its term never a word came: not one fiducial word through the naming of Christian to exonerate Rhoda. So Lois, too, had the comfort of death, and Rhoda only was left, through long life to go unenlightened, and still to go dauntless of the dark. EPILOGUE