ROCKS OF THE SIRENS

THESE four months had been busy and eventful enough to Hypatia and
to Philammon; yet the events and the business were of so gradual and
uniform a tenor, that it is as well to pass quickly over them, and show
what had happened principally by its effects.

The robust and fiery desert-lad was now metamorphosed into the pale and
thoughtful student, oppressed with the weight of careful thought and
weary memory. But those remembrances were all recent ones. With his
entrance into Hypatia's lecture-room, and into the fairy realms of Greek
thought, a new life had begun for him; and the Laura, and Pambo, and
Arsenius, seemed dim phantoms from some antenatal existence, which faded
day by day before the inrush of new and startling knowledge.

But though the friends and scenes of his childhood had fallen back
so swiftly into the far horizon, he was not lonely. His heart found a
lovelier, if not a healthier home, than it had ever known before. For
during those four peaceful and busy months of study there had sprung
up between Hypatia and the beautiful boy one of those pure and yet
passionate friendships--call them rather, with St. Augustine, by the
sacred name of love--which, fair and holy as they are when they link
youth to youth, or girl to girl, reach their full perfection only
between man and woman. The unselfish adoration with which a maiden
may bow down before some strong and holy priest, or with which an
enthusiastic boy may cling to the wise and tender matron, who, amid
the turmoil of the world, and the pride of beauty, and the cares of
wifehood, bends down to with counsel and encouragement--earth knows
no fairer bonds than these, save wedded love itself. And that second
relation, motherly rather than sisterly, had bound Philammon with a
golden chain to the wondrous maid of Alexandria.

From the commencement of his attendance in her lecture-room she had
suited her discourses to what she fancied were his especial spiritual
needs; and many a glance of the eye towards him, on any peculiarly
important sentence, set the poor boy's heart beating at that sign that
the words were meant for him. But before a month was past, won by the
intense attention with which he watched for every utterance of hers, she
had persuaded her father to give a place in the library as one of his
pupils, among the youths who were employed there daily in transcribing,
as well as in studying, the authors then in fashion.

She saw