All now seems dumb and colorless, and if the abyss is my grave, no one will miss me nor mourn for me." "Poor woman!" said Paulus.

"Your husband then showed you very little love." "Love," laughed Sirona, "Phoebicius and love! Only yesterday I told you, how cruelly he used to torture me after his feasts, when he was drunk or when he recovered from one of his swoons.

But one thing he did to me, one thing which broke the last thread of a tie between us.

No one yet has ever heard a word of it from me; not even Dorothea, who often blamed me when I let slip a hard word against my husband.

It was well for her to talk--if I had found a husband like Petrus I might perhaps have been like Dorothea.