urprise and awe, and evidently thinking no more about the absurdity
of his sheepskin and his tanned complexion; and he went out with a
stunned, confused feeling, as of one who, by a desperate leap, has
plunged into a new world. He tried to feel content; but he dare not. All
before him was anxiety, uncertainty. He had cut himself adrift; he was
on the great stream. Whither would it lead him? Well--was it not the
great stream? Had not all mankind, for all the ages, been floating on
it? Or was it but a desert-river, dwindling away beneath the fiery
sun, destined to lose itself a few miles on, among the arid sands? Were
Arsenius and the faith of his childhood right? And was the Old World
coming speedily to its death-throe, and the Kingdom of God at hand?
Or was Cyril right, and the Church Catholic appointed to spread, and
conquer, and destroy, and rebuild, till the kingdoms of this world had
become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ! If so, what use in this
old knowledge which he craved? And yet, if the day of the destruction of
all things were at hand, and the times destined to become worse and not
better, till the end-how could that be?....

'What news?' asked the little porter, who had been waiting for him at
the door all the while. 'What news, O favourite of the gods!'

'I will lodge with you, and labour with you. Ask me no more at present.
I am--I am--

'Those who descended into the Cave of Trophonius, and beheld the
unspeakable, remained astonished for three days, my young friend--and so
will you!' And they went forth together to earn their bread.

But what is Hypatia doing all this while, upon that cloudy Olympus,
where she sits enshrined far above the noise and struggle of man and his
work-day world?

She is sitting again, with her manuscripts open before her; but she is
thinking of the young monk, not of them.

'Beautiful as Antinous!.... Rather as the young Phoebus himself, fresh
glowing from the slaughter of the Python. Why should not he, too, become
a slayer of Pythons, and loathsome monsters, bred from the mud of sense
and matter? So bold and earnest! I can forgive him those words for the
very fact of his having dared, here in my fathers house, to say them to
me.... And yet so tender, so open to repentance and noble shame!--That
is no plebeian by birth; patrician blood surely flows in those veins;
it shows out in every attitude, every tone, every motion of the hand
and lip. He cannot be one of the herd