He drove the servant before him, through the
atrium, into a long corridor. Suddenly the silence was broken by a
shriek of agony, so terrible that Basil felt his blood chilled to
the very heart. This cry came again, echoing fearfully through the
halls and galleries of this palace of marble. The servants had fled;
Basil dropped to his knees, crossed himself, prayed, the sweat
standing upon his forehead. A footstep approached him; he rose, and
saw the physician who had been with Maximus at Surrentum.
'Does she still live?' he asked.
'If life it can be called. What do you here, lord Basil?'
'Can she hear and speak?'
'I understand you,' replied the physician. 'But it is useless. She
has confessed to the priest, and will utter no word more. Look to
yourself; the air you breathe is deadly.'
And Basil, weak as a child, suffered himself to be led away.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SOUL OF ROME
The library in Basil's house was a spacious, graceful room, offering
at this day very much the same aspect as in the time of that
ancestral Anician, who, when Aurelian ruled, first laid rolls and
codices upon its shelves.
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