"Then you----"
"Yes; I long to believe; _I will believe!_" exclaimed Arsinoë, and
immediately wondered. Those words appeared a miracle to herself, and
no deception. She had no wish to recall them.
"I will go into the desert, Myrrha; like you, instead of you," she
continued in a transport of wild love; "and, if God exists, He must
grant that there shall be no death between us; so that we _shall_ be
always together."
Myrrha closed her eyes, listening to her sister. With a smile of
infinite peace, she murmured--
"Now, I will go to sleep. I want nothing more. I am well."
She never opened her eyes or spoke again; her face was calm and severe
as the face of the dead; and in this state she lived on several days
longer.
When a cup of wine was brought near to her lips, she would swallow a
few mouthfuls. If her breathing became nervous and irregular,
Juventinus would chant a prayer or some divine hymn, and then, as if
soothed, Myrrha began to breathe more easily.
One evening, when the sun had set behind Ischia and Capreæ, while the
motionless sea was melting into heaven, and the first dim star
trembling, Juventinus was singing to the dying girl--
_Deus creator omnium
Polique rector vestiens,
Diem decore lumine
Noctem sopora gratia._
Perhaps Myrrha's last sigh was breathed to the sound of that solemn
hymn. None knew when she died. There seemed no change. Her life
mingled painlessly with the impalpable, inviolable, the Eternal, as
the warmth of a fair twilight melts into the coolness of night.
Arsinoë buried her sister in the catacombs, and with her own hand
engraved on the slab, "_Myrrha, vivis!_" ("Myrrha, thou livest.")
She scarcely wept. But she bore in her heart contempt for the world,
and the resolve to believe in God, or at least to do all she could to
attain belief in Him. She desired to distribute her fortune to the
poor, and to set out for the Thebaïd. On the very day Arsinoë informed
her indignant guardian of these intentions she received from Gaul a
curt and enigmatic letter from Cæsar Julian--
"Julian, to the most noble Arsinoë, happiness! Do you remember the
matter about which we spoke together at Athens, in front of the statue
of Artemis? Do you remember our alliance? Great is my hate, but
greater yet is my love. It may be that the lion shall fling away the
ass's skin soon. Meantime, let us be gentle as doves and wise as
serpents, according to the counsel of the Nazarean Christ."