‘And so it is,’ quoth Cyril. ‘Why do you not sit down, man?’
‘Pardon me,’ quoth the monk, with a piteous gesture; ‘of sitting, as of all carnal pleasure, cometh satiety at the last.’
‘And now’ said Cyril, ‘what reward am I to give you for your good service?’
‘It is reward enough to know that I have done good service. Nevertheless if the holy patriarch be so inclined without reason, there is an ancient Christian, my mother according to the flesh—’
‘Come to me to-morrow, and she shall be well seen to. And mind—look to it, if I make you not a deacon of the city when I promote Peter.’
The monk kissed his superior’s hand and withdrew. Cyril turned to Arsenius, betrayed for once into geniality by his delight, and smiting his thigh—
‘We have beaten the heathen for once, eh?’ And then, in the usual artificial tone of an ecclesiastic—‘And what would my father recommend in furtherance of the advantage so mercifully thrown into our hand?’
Arsenius was silent.
‘I,’ went on Cyril, ‘should be inclined to announce the news this very night, in my sermon.’
Arsenius shook his head.