it breathed into Christianity at its birth a sweetness and a grace
which twenty generations of cranks and savages like Paul and Jerome
and Tertullian weren't able to extinguish. But the very man, Cyril, who
killed Hypatia, and thus began the dark ages, unwittingly did another
thing which makes one almost forgive him. To please the Egyptians, he
secured the Church's acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin. It is
that idea which has kept the Greek spirit alive, and grown and grown,
till at last it will rule the world. It was only epileptic Jews who
could imagine a religion without sex in it."

"I remember the pictures of the Virgin in your room," said Theron,
feeling more himself again. "I wondered if they quite went with the
statues."

The remark won a smile from Celia's lips.

"They get along together better than you suppose," she answered.
"Besides, they are not all pictures of Mary. One of them, standing on
the moon, is of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms. Another might as
well be Mahamie, bearing the miraculously born Buddha, or Olympias with
her child Alexander, or even Perictione holding her babe Plato--all
these were similar cases, you know. Almost every religion had its
Immaculate Conception. What does it all come to, except to show us that
man turns naturally toward the worship of the maternal idea? That is the
deepest of all our instincts--love of woman, who is at once daughter and
wife and mother. It is that that makes the world go round."

Brave thoughts shaped themselves in Theron's mind, and shone forth in a
confident yet wistful smile on his face.

"It is a pity you cannot change estates with me for one minute," he
said, in steady, low tone. "Then you would realize the tremendous truth
of what you have been saying. It is only your intellect that has reached
out and grasped the idea. If you were in my place, you would discover
that your heart was bursting with it as well."

Celia turned and looked at him.

"I myself," he went on, "would not have known, half an hour ago, what
you meant by the worship of the maternal idea. I am much older than
you. I am a strong, mature man. But when I lay down there, and shut my
eyes--because the charm and marvel of this whole experience had for
the moment overcome me--the strangest sensation seized upon me. It was
absolutely as if I were a boy again, a good, pure-minded, fond little
child, and you were the mother that I idolized."

Celia had not taken her