reater part of
the twenty-four hours. In lofty spacious apartments the resource adopted
is to exclude the external air, and to live as Greenlanders, with closed
windows and doors; this was both impossible, and would have been
unsuccessful, if attempted in the small apartment of Callista. But fever
of mind is even worse than the heat of the sky; and it is undeniable that
her health, and her strength, and her appearance are affected by both the
physical and the moral enemy. The beauty, which was her brother's delight,
is waning away; and the shadows, if not the rudiments of a diviner
loveliness, which is of expression, not of feature, which inspires not
human passion, but diffuses chaste thoughts and aspirations, are taking
its place. Aristo sees the change with no kind of satisfaction. The room
has a bench, two or three stools, and a bed of rushes in one corner. A
staple is firmly fixed in the wall; and an iron chain, light, however, and
long, if the two ideas can be reconciled, reaches to her slender arm, and
is joined to it by an iron ring.

On Polemo's entering the room, his first exclamation was to complain of
its closeness; but he had to do a work, so he began it without delay.
Callista, on her part, started; she had no wish for his presence. She was
reclining on her couch, and she sat up. She was not equal to a
controversy, nor did she mean to have one, whatever might be the case with
_him_.

"Callista, my life and joy, dear Callista," said her brother, "I have
brought the greatest man in Sicca to see you."

Callista cast upon him an earnest look, which soon subsided into
indifference. He had a rose of Cyrene in his hand, whose perfume he
diffused about the small room.

"It is Polemo," continued Aristo, "the friend of the great Plotinus, who
knows all philosophies and all philosophers. He has come out of kindness
to you."

Callista acknowledged his presence; it was certainly, she said, a great
kindness for any one to visit her, and there.

Polemo replied by a compliment; he said it was Socrates visiting Aspasia.
There had always been women above the standard of their sex, and they had
ever held an intellectual converse with men of mind. He saw one such
before him.

Callista felt it would be plunging her soul still deeper into shadows,
when she sought realities, if she must take part in such an argument. She
remained silent.

"Your sister has not the fit upon her?" asked Polemo of Aristo aside,
neither li