"and laid them at my feet, they could not make me
as rich as he has made me, and if all the stars were fused into one, the
vast globe of light which they would form could not shine so brightly as
the joy that fills my soul. Come now what may, I will never complain
after that hour of delight."

Then she thought over each of her former meetings with Polykarp, and
remembered that he had never spoken to her of love. What must it not have
cost him to control himself thus; and a great triumphant joy filled her
heart at the thought that she was pure, and not unworthy of him, and an
unutterable sense of gratitude rose up in her soul. The love she bore
this man seemed to take wings, and it spread itself over the common life
and aspect of the world, and rose to a spirit of devotion. With a deep
sigh she raised her eyes and hands to heaven, and in her longing to prove
her love to every living being, nay to every created thing, her spirit
sought the mighty and beneficent Power to whom she owed such exalted
happiness.

In her youth her father had kept her very strictly, but still he had
allowed her to go through the streets of the town with her young
companions, wreathed with flowers, and all dressed in their best, in the
procession of maidens at the feast of Venus of Arelas, to whom all the
women of her native town were wont to turn with prayers and sacrifices
when their hearts were touched by love.

Now she tried to pray to Venus, but again and again the wanton jests of
the men who were used to accompany the maidens came into her mind, and
memories of how she herself had eagerly listened for the only too
frequent cries of admiration, and had enticed the silent with a glance,
or thanked the more clamorous with a smile. To-day certainly she had no
mind for such sport, and she recollected the stern words which had fallen
from Dorothea's lips on the worship of Venus, when she had once told her
how well the natives of Arelas knew how to keep their feasts.

And Polykarp, whose heart was nevertheless so full of love, he no doubt
thought like his mother, and she pictured him as she had frequently seen
him following his parents by the side of his sister Marthana--often hand
in hand with her--as they went to church. The senator's son had always
had a kindly glance for her, excepting when he was one of this procession
to the temple of the God of whom they said that He was love itself, and
whose votaries indeed were not poor in love; for i