Meanwhile Gula had also turned her face toward Hermon, and he now addressed her, saying with a faint tone of reproach:  “And did hatred lead you also, Gula, to this sanctuary at midnight to implore the goddess to destroy me in her wrath?”

The young mother rose and pointed to Ledscha, exclaiming, “She desires it.”

“And I?” he asked gently.  “Have I really done you so much evil?”

She raised her hand to her brow as if bewildered; her glance fell on the artist’s troubled face, and lingered there for a short time.  Then her eyes wandered to Ledscha, and from her to the goddess, and finally back again to the sculptor.  Meanwhile Hermon saw how her young figure was trembling, and, before he had time to address a soothing-word to her, she sobbed aloud, crying out to Ledscha:  “You are not a mother!  My child, he rescued it from the flames.  I will not, and I can not—­I will no longer pray for his misfortune!”

She drew her veil over her pretty, tear-stained face as she spoke, and darted lightly down the temple steps close beside him to seek shelter in her parents’ house, which had been unwillingly opened to the cast-off wife, but now afforded her a home rich in affection.

Immeasurably bitter scorn was depicted in Ledscha’s features as she gazed after Gula.  She did not appear to notice Hermon, and when at last he appealed to her and briefly urged her to ask the old enchantress on the Owl’s Nest for a remedy for the wounded Gaul, she again leaned against the post of the cella door, extended both arms with passionate fervour toward the goddess, and remained standing there motionless, deaf to his petition.

His blood seethed in his veins, and he was tempted to go nearer and force her to hear him; but before he had ascended the first of the flight of steps leading to the pronaos, he heard the footsteps of the men who were bearing the wounded warrior after him.

They must not see him here with one of their countrywomen at this hour, and manly pride forbade him to address her again as a supplicant.

So he went back to the road, mounted his horse, and rode on without vouchsafing a word of farewell to the woman who was invoking destruction upon his head.  As he did so his eyes again rested on the stern face of Nemesis, and the wheel whose turning determined the destiny of men at her feet.

Assailed by horrible fears, and overpowered by presentiments of evil, he pursued his way through the darkness.

Perhaps Myrtilus had succumbed to the terrible attack which must have visited him in such a storm, and life without his friend would be bereft of half its charm.  Orphaned, poor, a struggler who had gained no complete victory, it had been rich only in disappointments to him, in spite of his conviction that he was a genuine artist, and was fighting for a good cause.  Now he knew that he had also lost the woman by whose assistance he was certain of a great success in his own much-disputed course, and Ledscha, if any one, was right in expecting a favourable hearing from the goddess who punished injustice.