ur
sister--why can you not do as well now? You don't recollect her--you
don't love her.'

'Not love her? I would die for her--die for you if you will but help me
to see her!'

'You would, would you? And if I brought you to her, what then! What if
she were Pelagia herself, what then? She is happy enough now, and rich
enough. Could you make her happier or richer?'

'Can you ask? I must--I will--reclaim her from the infamy in which I am
sure she lives.'

'Ah ha, sir monk! I expected as much. I know, none knows better, what
those fine words mean. The burnt child dreads the fire; but the burnt
old woman quenches it, you will find. Now listen. I do not say that you
shall not see her--I do not say that Pelagia herself is not the woman
whom you seek--but--you are in my power. Don't frown and pout. I can
deliver you as a slave to Arsenius when I choose. One word from me to
Orestes, and you are in fetters as a fugitive.'

'I will escape!' cried he fiercely.

'Escape me?'--She laughed, pointing to the teraph--'Me, who, if you fled
beyond Kaf, or dived to the depths of the ocean, could make these dead
lips confess where you were, and command demons to bear you back to me
upon their wings! Escape me! Better to obey me, and see your sister.'

Philammon shuddered, and submitted. The spell of the woman's eye, the
terror of her words, which he half believed, and the agony of longing,
conquered him, and he gasped out--

'I will obey you--only--only--'

'Only you are not quite a man yet, but half a monk still, eh? I must
know that before I help you, my pretty boy. Are you a monk still, or a
man?'

'What do you mean?'

'Ah, ha, ha!' laughed she shrilly. 'And these Christian dogs don't know
what a man means? Are you a monk, then? leaving the man alone, as above
your understanding.'

'I?--I am a student of philosophy.'

'But no man?'

'I am a man, I suppose.'

'I don't; if you had been, you would have been making love like a man to
that heathen woman many a month ago.'

'I--to her?'

'Yes, I-to her!'Said Miriam, coarsely imitating his tone of shocked
humility. 'I, the poor penniless boy-scholar, to her, the great, rich,
wise, worshipped she-philosopher, who holds the sacred keys of the inner
shrine of the east wind--and just because I am a man, and the handsomest
man in Alexandria, and she a woman, and the vainest woman in Alexandria;
and therefore I am stronger than she, and can twist her round my finger,
and bring