esting with me. There is nothing in my life that you do not
know. What is the secret?"

"Nothing more than the wish to have one. You are growing tired of your
bargain. The play wearies you. That is foolish. Do you want to try a new
part?"

The question was like a mirror upon which one comes suddenly in a
half-lighted room. A quick illumination falls on it, and the passer-by
is startled by the look of his own face.

"You are right," said Hermas. "I am tired. We have been going on
stupidly in this house, as if nothing were possible but what my father
had done before me. There is nothing original in being rich, and
well-fed, and well-dressed. Thousands of men have tried it, and have
not been satisfied. Let us do something new. Let us make a mark in the
world."

"It is well said," nodded the old man; "you are speaking again like a
man after my own heart. There is no folly but the loss of an opportunity
to enjoy a new sensation."

From that day Hermas seemed to be possessed with a perpetual haste,
an uneasiness that left him no repose. The summit of life had been
attained, the highest possible point of felicity. Henceforward the
course could only be at a level--perhaps downward. It might be brief;
at the best it could not be very long. It was madness to lose a day, an
hour. That would be the only fatal mistake: to forfeit anything of the
bargain that he had made. He would have it, and hold it, and enjoy it
all to the full. The world might have nothing better to give than it had
already given; but surely it had many things that were new, and Marcion
should help him to find them.

Under his learned counsel the House of the Golden Pillars took on a new
magnificence. Artists were brought from Corinth and Rome and Alexandria
to adorn it with splendour. Its fame glittered around the world.
Banquets of incredible luxury drew the most celebrated guests into its
triclinium, and filled them with envious admiration. The bees swarmed
and buzzed about the golden hive. The human insects, gorgeous moths
of pleasure and greedy flies of appetite, parasites and flatterers and
crowds of inquisitive idlers, danced and fluttered in the dazzling light
that surrounded Hermas.

Everything that he touched prospered. He bought a tract of land in the
Caucasus, and emeralds were discovered among the mountains. He sent a
fleet of wheat-ships to Italy, and the price of grain doubled while it
was on the way. He sought political favour with the em