“He is perfectly hideous,” said Sabina, as they reached the huge face.  “But it is magnificent,” she added, passing her gloved hand over the great golden features.  “I wonder who it is meant for.”

“A Roman emperor as Hercules, I think,” Malipieri answered.  “It may be Commodus.  We are so near that it is hard to know how the head would look if the statue were set up.”

He was thinking very little of the statue just then, as he knelt on its colossal chest beside Sabina, and watched the play of the yellow light on her delicate face.  There was just room for them to kneel there, side by side.

It was magnificent, as Sabina had said, the great glittering thing, lying all alone in the depths of the earth, an enormous golden demigod in his tomb.

“You are wonderful!” exclaimed Sabina, suddenly turning her face to Malipieri.

“Why?”

“To have found it,” she explained.

“I wish I had found something more practical,” he answered.  “In my opinion this thing belongs to you, and I suppose it represents a small fortune.  But the only way for you to get even a share of it will be by bringing a suit against Volterra.  Half a dozen rubies like the one in the ring would have been enough for you, and you could have taken them home with you in your pocket.”

“I am afraid I have none!” Sabina laughed.

“This one will be safe in mine,” Malipieri answered.

“You are not going to take it?” cried Sabina, a little frightened.

“Yes.  I am going to take it for you.  I daresay it is worth a good deal of money.”

“But—­is it yours?”

“No.  It is yours.”

“I wonder whether I have any right to it.”  Sabina was perhaps justly doubtful about the proceeding.

“I do not care a straw for the government, or the laws, or Volterra, where you are concerned.  You shall have what is yours.  Shall we get down to the ground and see if there is anything else in the vault?”

He let himself slide over the left shoulder, and the lion’s skin that was modelled over it, and Sabina followed him cautiously.  By bending their heads they could now stand and walk, and there was a space fully five feet wide, between the statue and the perpendicular masonry from which the vault sprang.

Malipieri stopped short, with both lights in his hand, and uttered an exclamation.

“What is it?” asked Sabina.  “Oh!” she cried, as she saw what he had come upon.

For some moments neither spoke, and they stood side by side, pressed against each other in the narrow way and gazing down, for before them lay the most beautiful marble statue Sabina had ever seen.  In the yellow light it was like a living woman asleep rather than a marble goddess, hewn and chipped, smoothed and polished into shape ages ago, by men’s hands.

She lay a little turned to one side and away; the arm that was undermost was raised, so that the head seemed to be resting against it, though it was not; the other lying along and across the body, its perfect hand just gathering up a delicately futile drapery.  The figure was whole and unbroken, of cream-like marble, that made soft living shadows in each dimple and hollow and seemed to quiver along the lines of beauty, the shoulder just edging forwards, the bent arm, the marvellous sweep of the limbs from hip to heel.