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94 DARKNESS AND DAWN
slave stealing into her father's cell, bad followed lightly, and
with a pang of shame had seen the youth of whom she had
thought as a lover make his way noiselessly
to the room of
his master.
She followed him to the entrance ;
she saw him open the
casket ;
and she grew almost sick with terror when she
thought of the frightful punishment possibly even crucifixion
itself which might follow the crime he was on the
eve of committing. She would fain have stopped him, but
did not dare to enter the chamber ; and, meanwhile, for some
reason the youth was lingering.
He was lingering because there rang in his ear a voiceless
memory of words which Epaphras had quoted as a message of
Paul of Tarsus. The still voice said to him : Let him that
'
stole steal no more ;
but rather let him labour, working with
his hands.'
He was trying to suppress the mutiny of 'the blushing
shamefast spirit' within him, as he thought of the games and
the dice-box and the Subura, when he was thrilled through
and through by a terrified and scarcely audible whisper of
his name
'
'
Onesimus !
He turned round, and with nervous haste relocking the
casket, hurried into the passage. There, with head bowed
over her hands, he saw the figure of a young girl.
For one
instant she raised her face as he came out, and he exclaimed
'Junia !
'
She raised her hand with a warning gesture, put her finger
to her lips,
and vanished. She fled towards the garden "behind
the farthest precincts of the house, and he overtook her
in a walk sheltered from view by a trellis covered with the
leaves of a spreading vine.
'
Junia,' he said, flinging himself on his knees, ' will you
'
betray me ?
'
The girl stood pale and trembling. Onesimus,' she
'
said,
I conceal nothing from my father.'
'From your father? 01), Junia, he would drag me before
Pudens. Would you see me beaten, perhaps to death, with
the leaded thongs
? Would you hear me shriek under the
horrible scutica ? Could you bear to see the crows tearing my
'
flesh as I hung on the cross ?