sceptic--and
soon found himself fighting desperately, with Synesius backing him,
apparently for the mere pleasure of seeing a battle, and Majoricus
making him more and more cross by the implicit dogmatic faith with which
he hewed at one Gordian knot after another, till Augustine had to save
himself from his friends by tripping the good Prefect gently up, and
leaving him miles behind the disputants, who argued on and on, till
broad daylight shone in, and the sight of the desolation below recalled
all parties to more material weapons, and a sterner warfare.

But little thought Raphael Aben-Ezra, as he sat there, calling up every
resource of his wit and learning, in the hope, half malicious, half
honestly cautious, of upsetting the sage of Hippo, and forgetting all
heaven and earth in the delight of battle with his peers, that in a
neighbouring chamber, her tender limbs outspread upon the floor, her
face buried in her dishevelled locks; lay Victoria, wrestling all night
long for him in prayer and bitter tears, as the murmur of busy voices
reached her eager ears, longing in vain to catch the sense of words, on
which hung now her hopes and bliss-how utterly and entirely, she lead
never yet confessed to herself, though she dare confess it to that
Son of Man to whom she prayed, as to One who felt with tenderness and
insight beyond that of a brother, a father, even of a mother, for her
maiden's blushes and her maiden's woes.

CHAPTER XXII: PANDEMONIUM

But where was Philammon all that week?

For the first day or two of his imprisonment he had raved like some wild
beast entrapped. His new-found purpose and energy, thus suddenly dammed
back and checked, boiled up in frantic rage. He tore at the bars of his
prison; he rolled himself, shrieking, on the floor. He called in vain on
Hypatia, on Pelagia, on Arsenius--on all but God. Pray he could not, and
dare not; for to whom was he to pray? To the stars?--to the Abysses and
the Eternities?....

Alas! as Augustine said once, bitterly enough, of his own Manichaean
teachers, Hypatia had taken away the living God, and given him instead
the four Elements.... And in utter bewilderment and hopeless terror
he implored the pity of every guard and gaoler who passed along the
corridor, and conjured them, as brothers, fathers, men, to help him.
Moved at once by his agony and by his exceeding beauty, the rough
Thracians, who knew enough of their employer's character to have little
dif