se to mention the thing to no one--'

'I will promise.'

'And in case my daughter, as I have a right to expect, shall refuse--'

'Let her keep the jewels. Their owner has learnt, thank God, to despise
and hate them! Let her keep the jewels--and my curse! For God do so to
me, and more also, if I ever see her face again!'

The old man had not heard the latter part of Philammon's speech. He had
seized his bait as greedily as a crocodile, and hurried off with it into
Hypatia's chamber, while Philammon stood expectant; possessed with a new
and fearful doubt. 'Degrade herself!' 'Contaminate her purity!' If
that notion were to be the fruit of all her philosophy? If selfishness,
pride, Pharisaism, were all its outcome? Why--had they not been its
outcome already? When had he seen her helping, even pitying, the poor,
the outcast? When had he heard from her one word of real sympathy for
the sorrowing; for the sinful?.... He was still lost in thought when
Theon re-entered, bringing a letter.

'_From Hypatia to her well-beloved pupil_.

'I pity you--how should I not? And more. I thank you for this your
request, for it shows me that my unwilling presence at the hideous
pageant of to-day has not alienated from me a soul of which I had
cherished the noblest hopes, for which I had sketched out the
loftiest destiny. But how shall I say it? Ask yourself whether a
change--apparently impossible--must not take place in her for whom you
plead, before she and I can meet. I am not so inhuman as to blame you
for having asked me; I do not even blame her for being what she is. She
does but follow her nature; who can be angry with her, if destiny have
informed so fair an animal with a too gross and earthly spirit? Why weep
over her? Dust she is, and unto dust she will return: while you, to
whom a more divine spark was allotted at your birth, must rise, and
unrepining, leave below you one only connected with you by the unreal
and fleeting bonds of fleshly kin.'

Philammon crushed the letter together in his hand, and strode from
the house without a word. The philosopher had no gospel, then, for the
harlot! No word for the sinner, the degraded! Destiny forsooth! She was
to follow her destiny, and be base, miserable, self-condemned. She was
to crush the voice of conscience and reason, as often as it awoke within
her, and compel herself to believe that she was bound to be that which
she knew herself bound not to be. She was to shut her eyes to th