The Shepherd's Flute, 8.
and, had Erasmus not hastened to her, she would have
lain ernshed below the next instant.
"Un happy creature!" he explained, holding the
trembling form in his arms: "what were you about to
do?"
"End a life which is worth nothing more to me,
now that I have lost your confidence."
Erasmus’ laps touched his wife’s brow, as she lay
seemingly unconscious in his arms, and he bleathed
deep.
All at once delicious notes broke from the si¬
lence of the valley, which lay in the grey morning
light. Dionysia openod her eyes; she listened, and
her feetures, which had just been relaxed in despair-
ing weariness, again grew tense. Erasmus noticed
this, and immediately released Dionysia from his em-
brace. "Do you know what sound rose up to us just
now?" he asked. "It is the music of a shepherd’s
flute. And see, although you would notcoillingly
admit it to yourself, although indeed you are not
really conscious of it, you, who were just ready to
go to your death, are curious to know on whose laps
lies the flute from which come these notes. So now