I ran down as fast as possible, but when I reached the spot she had fainted, and was utterly unconscious.  She was alone; I could see no other human being in the Coliseum.  The chanting monks had gone; even the beggars had not yet come.  I tried in vain to rouse her.  She had fallen so that the hot sun was beating full on her face.  I dared not leave her there, for her first unconscious movement might be such that she would fall over the edge.  But I saw that she must have shade and water, or die.  Every instant she grew whiter and her lips looked more rigid.  I shouted aloud, and only the echoes answered me, as if in mockery.  A little lark suddenly flew out from a tuft of yellow wall-flower close by, and burst into a swift carol of delight as he soared away.  At last, with great efforts, I succeeded in dragging her, by her feet—­for I dared not venture out so far as the spot on which her head lay—­to a safer place, and into the partial shade of a low bush.  As I did this, one of her delicate hands was scratched and torn on the rough stones, and drops of blood came to the surface.  In the other hand were crushed a few spikes of asphodel, the very flowers, no doubt, which had lured me so near the same dangerous brink.  It seemed impossible to go away and leave her, but it was cruel to delay.  My feet felt like lead as I ran along those dark galleries and down the stone flights of giddy stairs.  Just in the entrance stood one of those pertinacious sellers of old coins and bits of marble.  I threw down a piece of silver on his little stand, seized a small tin basin in which he had his choicest coins, emptied them on the ground, and saying, in my poor Italian, “Lady—­ill—­water,” I had filled the basin at the old stone fountain near by, and was half way up the first flight of stairs again, before he knew what had happened.

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.