ot waver, although he,
like most Christian youths, had been forbidden to take part in the
wrestling-games in the Palaestra, and though he knew that he had to deal
with a strong and practised antagonist.

He himself was indeed no weakling, and his stormy indignation added to
his desire to measure himself against the hated seducer.

"Come on--come on!" he cried; his eyes flashing, and leaning forward
with his neck out-stretched and ready on his part for the struggle.
"Grip hold! you were a gladiator, or something of the kind, before you
put on that filthy dress that you might break into houses at night, and
go unpunished. Make this sacred spot an arena, and if you succeed in
making an end of me I will thank you, for what made life worth having to
me, you have already ruined whether or no. Only come on. Or perhaps
you think it easier to ruin the life of a woman than to measure your
strength against her defender? Clutch hold, I say, clutch hold, or--"

"Or you will fall upon me," said Paulus, whose arms had dropped by his
side during the youth's address. He spoke in a quite altered tone of
indifference. "Throw yourself upon me, and do with me what you will; I
will not prevent you. Here I shall stand, and I will not fight, for
you have so far hit the truth--this holy place is not an arena. But
the Gaulish lady belongs neither to you nor to me, and who gives you a
claim--?"

"Who gives me a right over her?" interrupted Polykarp, stepping close up
to his questioner with sparkling eyes. "He who permits the worshipper
to speak of his God. Sirona is mine, as the sun and moon and stars are
mine, because they shed a beautiful light on my murky path. My life is
mine--and she was the life of my life, and therefore I say boldly, and
would say, if there were twenty such as Phoebicius here, she belongs
to me. And because I regarded her as my own, and so regard her still, I
hate you and fling my scorn in your teeth--you are like a hungry sheep
that has got into the gardener's flower-bed, and stolen from the stem
the wonderful, lovely flower that he has nurtured with care, and that
only blooms once in a hundred years--like a cat that has sneaked into
some marble hall, and that to satisfy its greed has strangled some rare
and splendid bird that a traveller has brought from a distant land. But
you! you hypocritical robber, who disregard your own body with beastly
pride, and sacrifice it to low brutality--what should you know of the
magi