ant
can never change, for he is more than man!'

'But he has deceived you! You have found out your mistake. Leave him,
then, as he deserves!'

Pelagia looked up, with something of a tender smile. 'Poor darling!
Little do you know of love!'

Philammon, utterly bewildered by this newest and strangest phase of
human passion, could only gasp out--

'But do you not love me, too, my sister?'

'Do I not love you? But not as I love him! Oh, hush, hush!--, you cannot
understand yet!' And Pelagia hid her face in her hands, while convulsive
shudderings ran through every limb....

'I must do it! I must! I will dare every thing, stoop to everything for
love's sake! Go to her!--to the wise woman!--to Hypatia! She loves you!
I know that she loves you! She will hear you, though she will not me!'

'Hypatia? Do you know that she was sitting there unmoved at--in the
theatre?'

'She was forced! Orestes compelled her! Miriam told me so. And I saw it
in her face. As I passed beneath her, I looked up; and she was as pale
as ivory, trembling in every limb. There was a dark hollow round her
eyes--she had been weeping, I saw. And I sneered in my mad self-conceit,
and said, "She looks as if she was going to be crucified, not married!".
But now, now!--Oh, go to her! Tell her that I will give her all I
have--jewels, money, dresses, house! Tell her that I--I--entreat
her pardon, that I will crawl to her feet myself and ask it, if she
requires!--Only let her teach me--teach me to be wise and good,
and honoured, and respected, as she is! Ask her to tell a poor
broken-hearted woman her secret. She can make old Wulf, and him, and
Orestes even, and the magistrates, respect her.... Ask her to teach me
how to be like her, and to make him respect me again, and I will give
her all--all!'

Philammon hesitated. Something within warned him, as the Daemon used
to warn Socrates, that his errand would be bootless. He thought of the
theatre, and of that firm, compressed lip; and forgot the hollow eye of
misery which accompanied it, in his wrath against his lately-worshipped
idol.

'Oh, go! go! I tell you it was against her will. She felt for me--I saw
it--Oh, God! when I did not feel for myself! And I hated her, because
she seemed to despise me in my fool's triumph! She cannot despise me
now in my misery.... Go! Go! or you will drive me to the agony of going
myself.'

There was but one thing to be done.

'You will wait, then, here? You will not lea