‘And I have a sister!’ gasped Philammon, his eyes bursting with tears. ‘We must find her! You will help me?—Now—this moment! There is nothing else to be thought of, spoken of, done, henceforth, till she is found!’
‘Ah, my son, my son! Better, better, perhaps, to leave her in the hands of God! What if she were dead? To discover that, would be to discover needless sorrow. And what if—God grant that it be not so! she had only a name to live, and were dead, worse than dead, in sinful pleasure—’
‘We would save her, or die trying to save her! Is it not enough for me that she is my sister?’ Arsenius shook his head. He little knew the strange new light and warmth which his words had poured in upon the young heart beside him. ‘A sister!’ What mysterious virtue was there in that simple word, which made Philammon’s brain reel and his heart throb madly? A sister! not merely a friend, an equal, a help-mate, given by God Himself, for loving whom none, not even a monk, could blame him.—Not merely something delicate, weak, beautiful—for of course she must be beautiful-whom he might cherish, guide, support, deliver, die for, and find death delicious. Yes—all that, and more than that, lay in the sacred word. For those divided and partial notions had flitted across his mind too rapidly to stir such passion as moved him now; even the hint of her sin and danger had been heard heedlessly, if heard at all. It was the word itself which bore its own message, its own spell to the heart of the fatherless and motherless foundling, as he faced for the first time the deep, everlasting, divine reality of kindred.... A sister! of his own flesh and blood—born of the same father, the same mother—his, his, for ever! How hollow and fleeting seemed all ‘spiritual sonships,’ ‘spiritual daughterhoods,’ inventions of the changing fancy, the wayward will of man! Arsenius—Pambo—ay, Hypatia herself—what were they to him now? Here was a real relationship .... A sister! What else was worth caring for upon earth?
‘And she was at Athens when Pelagia was’—he cried at last—‘perhaps knew her—let us go to Pelagia herself!’
‘Heaven forbid!’ said Arsenius. ‘We must wait at least till Miriam’s answer comes.’
‘I can show you her house at least in the meanwhile; and you can go in yourself when you will. I do not ask to enter. Come! I feel certain that my finding her is in some way bound up with Pelagia. Had I not met her on the Nile, had you not met her in the street, I might never have heard that I had a sister. And if she went with Miriam, Pelagia must know her—she may be in that very house at this moment!’
Arsenius had his reasons for suspecting that Philammon was but too right. But he contented himself with yielding to the boy’s excitement, and set off with him in the direction of the dancer’s house.
They were within a few yards of the gate, when hurried footsteps behind them, and voices calling them by name, made them turn; and behold, evidently to the disgust of Arsenius as much as Philammon himself, Peter the Reader and a large party of monks!
Philammon’s first impulse was to escape; Arsenius himself caught him by the arm, and seemed inclined to hurry on.
‘No!’ thought the youth, ‘am I not a free man, and a philosopher?’ and facing round, he awaited the enemy.