He says to me, 'Do this: don't do that,' You may tell me that
this dictate is a mere law of my nature, as is to joy or to grieve. I
cannot understand this. No, it is the echo of a person speaking to me.
Nothing shall persuade me that it does not ultimately proceed from a
person external to me. It carries with it its proof of its divine origin.
My nature feels towards it as towards a person. When I obey it, I feel a
satisfaction; when I disobey, a soreness--just like that which I feel in
pleasing or offending some revered friend. So you see, Polemo, I believe
in what is more than a mere 'something.' I believe in what is more real to
me than sun, moon, stars, and the fair earth, and the voice of friends.
You will say, Who is He? Has He ever told you anything about Himself?
Alas! no!--the more's the pity! But I will not give up what I have, because
I have not more. An echo implies a voice; a voice a speaker. That speaker
I love and I fear."

Here she was exhausted, and overcome too, poor Callista! with her own
emotions.

"O that I could find Him!" she exclaimed, passionately. "On the right hand
and on the left I grope, but touch Him not. Why dost Thou fight against
me?--why dost Thou scare and perplex me, O First and Only Fair? I have Thee
not, and I need Thee." She added, "I am no Christian, you see, or I should
have found Him; or at least I should say I had found Him."

"It is hopeless," said Polemo to Aristo, in much disgust, and with some
hauteur of manner: "she is too far gone. You should not have brought me to
this place."

Aristo groaned.

"Shall I," she continued, "worship any but Him? Shall I say that He whom I
see not, whom I seek, is our Jupiter, or Caesar, or the goddess Rome? They
are none of them images of this inward guide of mine. I sacrifice to Him
alone."

The two men looked at each other in amazement: one of them in anger.

"It's like the demon of Socrates," said Aristo, timidly.

"I will acknowledge Caesar in every fitting way," she repeated; "but I will
not make him my God."

Presently she added, "Polemo, will not that invisible Monitor have
something to say to all of us,--to you,--at some future day?"

"Spare me! spare me, Callista!" cried Polemo, starting up with a violence
unsuited to his station and profession. "Spare my ears, unhappy
woman!--such words have never hitherto entered them. I did not come to be
insulted. Poor, blind, hapless, perverse spirit--I separate myself from you
for