t. He declares war against the
Church of God!'

'Oh, my friends,' panted the archdeacon, 'we are escaped like the bird
out of the snare of the fowler. The tyrant kept us waiting two hours at
his palace-gates, and then sent lictors out upon us, with rods and axes,
telling us that they were the only message which he had for robbers and
rioters.'

'Back to the patriarch!' and the whole mob streamed in again, leaving
Philammon alone in the street--and in the world.

Whither now?

He strode on in his wrath some hundred yards or more before he asked
himself that question. And when he asked it, he found himself in no
humour to answer it. He was adrift, and blown out of harbour upon a
shoreless sea, in utter darkness; all heaven and earth were nothing to
him. He was alone in the blindness of anger.

Gradually one fixed idea, as a light-tower, began to glimmer through the
storm.... To see Hypatia, and convert her. He had the patriarch's leave
for that. That must be right. That would justify him--bring him back,
perhaps, in a triumph more glorious than any Caesar's, leading captive,
in the fetters of the Gospel, the Queen of Heathendom. Yes, there was
that left, for which to live.

His passion cooled down gradually as he wandered on in the fading
evening light, up one street and down another, till he had utterly lost
his way. What matter? He should find that lecture-room to-morrow at
least. At last he found himself in a broad avenue, which he seemed to
know. Was that the Sun-gate in the distance? He sauntered carelessly
down it, and found himself at last on the great Esplanade, whither the
little porter had taken him three days before. He was close then to the
Museum, and to her house. Destiny had led him, unconsciously, towards
the scene of his enterprise. It was a good omen; he would go thither
at once. He might sleep upon her doorstep as well as upon any other.
Perhaps he might catch a glimpse of her going out or coming in, even
at that late hour. It might be well to accustom himself to the sight
of her. There would be the less chance of his being abashed to-morrow
before those sorceress eyes. And moreover, to tell the truth, his
self-dependence, and his self-will too, crushed, or rather laid to
sleep, by the discipline of the Laura, had started into wild life, and
gave him a mysterious pleasure, which he had not felt since he was a
disobedient little boy, of doing what he chose, right or wrong, simply
because he chose