Him so merely human a thing as
virtue.'

Hypatia was silent.

'Now I have always had a sort of fancy that what we wanted, as the
first predicate of our Absolute One, was that He was to be not merely an
infinite God--whatever that meant, which I suspect we did not always see
quite clearly--or an eternal one--or an omnipotent one--or even merely a
one God at all; none of which predicates, I fear, did we understand more
clearly than the first: but that he must be a righteous God:--or
rather, as we used sometimes to say that He was to have no
predicate--Righteousness itself. And all along, I could not help
remembering that my old sacred Hebrew books told me of such a one; and
feeling that they might have something to tell me which--'

'Which I did not tell you! And this, then, caused your air of reserve,
and of sly superiority over the woman whom you mocked by calling her
your pupil! I little suspected you of so truly Jewish a jealousy! Why,
oh why, did you not tell me this?'

'Because I was a beast, Hypatia; and had all but forgotten what this
righteousness was like; and was afraid to find out lest it should
condemn me. Because I was a devil, Hypatia; and hated righteousness, and
neither wished to see you righteous, nor God righteous either, because
then you would both have been unlike myself. God be merciful to me a
sinner!'

She looked up in his face. The man was changed as if by miracle--and yet
not changed. There was the same gallant consciousness of power, the same
subtle and humorous twinkle in those strong ripe Jewish features and
those glittering eyes; and yet every line in his face was softened,
sweetened; the mask of sneering faineance was gone--imploring tenderness
and earnestness beamed from his whole countenance. The chrysalis case
had fallen off, and disclosed the butterfly within. She sat looking
at him, and passed her hand across her eyes, as if to try whether the
apparition would not vanish. He, the subtle!--he, the mocker!--he, the
Lucian of Alexandria!--he whose depth and power had awed her, even in
his most polluted days.... And this was the end of him....

'It is a freak of cowardly superstition.... Those Christians have been
frightening him about his sins and their Tartarus.'

She looked again into his bright, clear, fearless face, and was ashamed
of her own calumny. And this was the end of him--of Synesius--of
Augustine--of learned and unlearned, Goth and Roman .... The great flood
would ha