expressive eyes than any other here, if he were not always talking
of his plans, and drawings, and figures, and mere stupid grave things
that I do not care for!"

CHAPTER VII.

The next day, after the sun had passed the meridian and it was beginning
to grow cool, Hermas and Paulus yielded to Stephanus' wish, as he began
to feel stronger, and carried him out into the air. The anchorites sat
near each other on a low block of stone, which Hermas had made into a
soft couch for his father by heaping up a high pile of fresh herbs. They
looked after the youth, who had taken his bow and arrows, as he went
up the mountain to hunt a wild goat; for Petrus had prescribed a
strengthening diet for the sick man. Not a word was spoken by either of
them till the hunter had disappeared. Then Stephanus said, "How much he
has altered since I have been ill. It is not so very long since I last
saw him by the broad light of day, and he seems meantime to have grown
from a boy into a man. How self-possessed his gait is."

Paulus, looking down at the ground, muttered some words of assent. He
remembered the discus-throwing and thought to himself, "The Palaestra
certainly sticks in his mind, and he has been bathing too; and
yesterday, when he came up from the oasis, he strode in like a young
athlete."

That friendship only is indeed genuine when two friends, without
speaking a word to each other, can nevertheless find happiness in being
together. Stephanus and Paulus were silent, and yet a tacit intercourse
subsisted between them as they sat gazing towards the west, where the
sun was near its setting.

Far below them gleamed the narrow, dark blue-green streak of the Red
Sea, bounded by the bare mountains of the coast, which shone in a
shimmer of golden light. Close beside them rose the toothed crown of
the great mountain which, so soon as the day-star had sunk behind it,
appeared edged with a riband of glowing rubies. The flaming glow flooded
the western horizon, filmy veils of mist floated across the hilly
coast-line, the silver clouds against the pure sky changed their hue
to the tender blush of a newly opened rose, and the undulating shore
floated in the translucent violet of the amethyst. There not a breath of
air was stirring, not a sound broke the solemn stillness of the evening.
Not till the sea was taking a darker and still darker hue, till the glow
on the mountain peaks and in the west had begun to die away, and the
night to s