nah conducted Arsinoe to Paulina's villa, first into a small room
at the side of the entrance hall, where the deaconesses took off their
veils and their warm wraps in winter evenings. There the girl could be
alone, and safe from inquisitive questionings which could not fail to be
painful to her. Hannah desired her to await her return, and then joined
her colleagues.

In order to do so she had to pass through the room where the elders
and deacons were sitting in council. The bishop, who presided over the
assembly, sat on a raised seat at the head of an oblong table, and on
his right hand and his left sat a number of elderly men, some of whom
seemed to be of Jewish or Egyptian extraction but most of them were
Greeks. In these the lofty intellectual brow was conspicuous, in those
a bright, ecstatic expression particularly in the eyes. Hannah went
past the assembly with a reverential greeting into the adjoining room in
which the deaconesses sat waiting, for women were not admitted to join
or hear the deliberations of the elders. The bishop, a fine old man
with a full white beard; raised his kindly eyes as the door closed upon
Hannah, fixed them for a few moments on the tips of his fingers that
he had raised and then addressed the presbyter who had presented for
baptism several candidates who had been grounded during the past year in
the Christian faith and doctrine, as follows:

"Most of the catechumens you have presented to me cling faithfully no
doubt to the Redeemer. They believe in Him and love Him. But have they
attained to that sanctification, that new birth in Christ, which alone
can justify us in admitting them through baptism among the lambs of our
Good Shepherd? Let us beware of the tainted sheep which may infect the
whole flock. Verily, in these latter years there has been no lack of
them, and they have been received among us and have brought the name of
Christian into evil repute. Shall I give you an example? There was an
Egyptian in Rhakotis; few seemed to strive so fervently as he for the
remission of his sins. He could fast for many days, and yet no sooner
was he baptized than he broke into a goldsmith's shop. He was condemned
to death, and before his end he sent for me and confessed to me that in
former years he had soiled his soul with many robberies and murders. He
had hoped to win forgiveness of his sins by the act of baptism, the mere
washing in water, not by repentance and a new birth to a pure and holy