d at last she heard
Andreas exclaim in high wrath: "You are like the guests at a richly
furnished banquet who ask, after they have well eaten, when the meat
will be brought in. Paraclete is come, and yet you look for another."

He was not allowed to proceed; fierce and scornful contradiction checked
his speech, till a voice of thunder was heard above the rest:

"The heavenly Jerusalem is at hand. He who denies and doubts the calling
of Montanus is worse than the heathen, and I, for one, cast him off as
neither a brother nor a Christian!"

This furious denunciation was drowned in uproar; the anxious girl heard
seats overturned, and the yells and shouts of furious combatants; the
suffering youth meanwhile moaned with anguish, and an expression of
acute pain was stamped on his handsome features. Melissa could bear it
no longer; she had risen to go and entreat the men to make less noise,
when suddenly all was still.

Diodoros immediately became calmer, and looked up at the girl as
gratefully as though the soothing silence were owing to her. She could
now hear the deep tones of the head of the Church of Alexandria,
and understood that the matter in hand was the readmission into this
congregation of a man who had been turned out by some other sect. Some
would have him rejected, and commended him to the mercy of God; others,
less rigid, were willing to receive him, since he was ready to submit to
any penance.

Then the quarrel began again. High above every other voice rose the
shrill tones of a man who had just arrived from Carthage, and who
boasted of personal friendship with the venerable Tertullian. The
listening girl could no longer follow the connection of the discussion,
but the same names again met her ear; and, though she understood nothing
of the matter, it annoyed her, because the turmoil disturbed her lover's
rest.

It was not till the sick-nurse came back that the tumult was appeased;
for, as soon as she learned how seriously the loud disputes of her
fellow-believers were disturbing the sick man's rest, she interfered so
effectually, that the house was as silent as before.

The deaconess Katharine was the name by which she was known, and in a
few minutes she returned to her patient's bedside.

Andreas followed her, with the leech, a man of middle height, whose
shrewd and well-formed head, bald but for a little hair at the sides,
was set on a somewhat ungainly body. His sharp eyes looked hither and
thither