magistrates, to see that they return possessors of their just rights.'
[Footnote: An authentic letter of Synesius to Hypatia.]

'Of all who honour me!' said she, with a bitter sigh: and then looked up
quickly at Raphael, as if fearful of having betrayed herself. She turned
deadly pale. In his eyes was a look of solemn pity, which told her that
he knew--not all?--surely not all?

'Have you seen the--Miriam?' gasped she, rushing desperately at that
which she most dreaded.

'Not yet. I arrived but one hour ago; and Hypatia's welfare is still
more important to me than my own.'

'My welfare? It is gone!'

'So much the better. I never found mine till I lost it.'

'What do you mean?'

Raphael lingered, yet without withdrawing his gaze, as if he had
something of importance to say, which he longed and yet feared to utter.
At last--

'At least, you will confess that I am better drest than when we met
last. I have returned, you see, like a certain demoniac of Gadara, about
whom we used to argue, clothed--and perhaps also in my right mind....
God knows!'

'Raphael! are you come here to mock me? You know--you cannot have
been here an hour without knowing--that but yesterday I dreamed of
being'--and she drooped her eyes--'an empress; that to-day I am ruined;
to-morrow, perhaps, proscribed. Have you no speech for me but your old
sarcasms and ambiguities?'

Raphael stood silent and motionless.

'Why do you not speak? What is the meaning of this sad, earnest look, so
different from your former self?.... You have something strange to tell
me!'

'I have,' said he, speaking very slowly. 'What--what would Hypatia
answer if, after all, Aben-Ezra said like the dying Julian, "The
Galilean has conquered"?'

'Julian never said it! It is a monkish calumny.'

'But I say it.'

'Impossible!'

'I say it!'

'As your dying speech? The true Raphael Aben-Ezra, then, lives no more!'

'But he may be born again.'

'And die to philosophy, that he may be born again into barbaric
superstition! Oh worthy metempsychosis! Farewell, sir!' And she rose to
go.

'Hear me!--hear me patiently this once, noble, beloved Hypatia! One
more sneer of yours, and I may become again the same case-hardened fiend
which you knew me of old--to all, at least, but you. Oh, do not think
me ungrateful, forgetful! What do I not owe to you, whose pure and lofty
words alone kept smouldering in me the dim remembrance that there was
a Right, a Truth, an unseen w