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514 DARKNESS AND DAWN
'
'
No,' said Pompouia, '
but of a heavenly.'
'
Heavenly What ? is heaven '
? asked Popptea, wearily.
All that we know is life ;
and life has given me all that
pleasure can give, and rank and riches, and the adoration of
self; and it has left me so miserable that life itself has grown
hateful to me, while yet I fear death.'
Pomponia listened in profound sadness. '
Poppsea,' she
said, ' I need not fear now to tell
you that I am a Christian ;
and we Christians have been taught that
" he who saveth his
life shall lose it, and he who loseth it for Christ's sake, shall
find it." It is too late for you to redeem the life which you
have flung away, or to find the pleasure which you have slain
in seeking for it. But while there is life, there is hope. The
God in whom we Christians believe is a God of mercy, and
we believe also that Christ, the Son of God, died
and that by Him they may be washed away.'
for our sins,
'
All the waters of Adria would not wash mine away. Oh,
Pomponia, do you know that Seneca, and Octavia, and many
others owed their deaths to me ? '
'
You have sinned deeply but ; you have, I know, been
taught about the sacred books of the Jews, and have you not
read there of a guilty king, an adulterer and murderer, who
yet prayed " Oh, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great " ? And
has no Jewish teacher read you the promise of God by His
prophet, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be
as wool " '
?
'
I have heard those words,' said '
Poppsea. They were
quoted to me once by Helen, Queen of Adiabene, who is now
living as a proselyte at Jerusalem ;
and I have been taught
that there is but one God.'
'
Oh, pray to Him, then,' said
dant in pardon.'
Pomponia, ' for He is abun-
I know not how to pray,' said the dying Empress ; pray
'
'
for me.'
If Poppaea knew not, Pomponia knew well ;
for to her, as a
Christian, prayer had become the habit, the attitude of her life.
Poppeea had never before heard such words as those. She
knew that when she died she would be made a goddess by the
Senate, as her infant child had been ; yet here by her bedside
Pomponia was speaking of her as though she were any other