om a child's lips;
it can bridge over any abyss; it created the world and preserves the
existence of humanity, it can remove mountains--and these are the most
beautiful words of the greatest of the apostles: 'It is long suffering
and kind, it believes all things, hopes all things' and it knows no end.
It remains with us till death and will teach us to find that peace whose
bulwark and adornment, whose child and parent it is!"

Gorgo had looked lovingly at him while he spoke, and he, pressing her
hand to his lips went on with ardent feeling:

"Yes, you shall be mine--I dare, and I will go to ask you of your
father. There are some words spoken in one's life which can never be
forgotten. Once your father said that he wished that I was his son. On
the march, in camp, in battle, wherever I have wandered, those words
have been in my mind; for me they could have but one meaning: I would be
his son--I shall be his son when Gorgo is my wife!--And now the time has
come..."

"Not yet, not to-day," she interrupted eagerly. "My hopes are the
same as yours. I believe with you that our love can bring all that is
sweetest into our lives. What you believe I must believe, and I will
never urge upon you the things that I regard as holiest. I can give up
much, bear much, and it will all seem easy for your sake. We can
agree, and settle what shall be conceded to your Christ and what to our
gods--but not to-day; not even to-morrow. For the present let me first
carry out the task I have undertaken--when that is done and past,
then.... You have my heart, my love; but if I were to prove a deserter
from the cause to-day or to-morrow it would give others--Olympius--a
right to point at me with scorn."

"What is it then that you have undertaken?" asked Constantine with grave
anxiety.

"To crown and close my past life. Before I can say: I am yours, wholly
yours..."

"Are you not mine now, to-day, at once?" he urged.

"To day-no," she replied firmly. "The great cause still has a claim upon
me; the cause which I must renounce for your sake. But the woman who
gives only one person reason to despise her signs the death-warrant of
her own dignity. I will carry out what I have undertaken.... Do not ask
me what it is; it would grieve you to know.--The day after tomorrow,
when the feast of Isis is over...."

"Gorgo, Gorgo!" shouted Damia's shrill voice, interrupting the young
girl in her speech, and half a dozen slave-women came rushing out in
se