s
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 in Petrus'
house, if anywhere, all hearts were united by a tender affection. It
then occurred to her that Paulus had just now advised her to turn to
the crucified God of the Christians, who was full of an equal and divine
love to all men. To him Polykarp also prayed--was praying perhaps this
very hour; and if she now did the same her prayers would ascend together
with his, and so she might be in some sort one with that beloved friend,
from whom everything else conspired to part her.

She knelt down and folded her hands, as she had so often seen Christians
do, and she reflected on the torments that the poor Man, who hung with
pierced hands on the cross, had so meekly endured, though He suffered
innocently; she felt the deepest pity for Him, and softly said to
herself, as she raised her eyes to the low roof of her cave-dwelling:

"Thou poor good Son of God, Thou knowest what it is when all men condemn
us unjustly, and surely, Thou canst understand when I say to Thee how
sore my poor heart is! And they say too, that of all hearts Thine is the
most loving, and so thou wilt know how it is that, in spite of all my
misery, it still seems to me that I am a happy woman. The very breath
of a God must be rapture, and that Thou too must have learned when they
tortured and mocked Thee, for Thou halt suffered out of love. They
say, that Thou wast wholly pure and