‘Yes—it does not seem to me that she would be appreciated—at all events for the present. Why not try Aphrodite? Christians as well as Pagans will thoroughly understand her; and I know no one who would not degrade the virgin goddess by representing her, except a certain lady, who has already, I hope, consented to sit in that very character, by the side of her too much honoured slave; and one Pallas is enough at a time in any theatre.’
Hypatia shuddered. He took it all for granted, then—and claimed her conditional promise to the uttermost. Was there no escape? She longed to spring up and rush away, into the streets, into the desert—anything to break the hideous net which she had wound around herself. And yet—was it not the cause of the gods—the one object of her life? And after all, if he the hateful was to be her emperor, she at least was to be an empress; and do what she would—and half in irony, and half in the attempt to hurl herself perforce into that which she knew that she must go through, and forget misery in activity, she answered as cheerfully as she could.
‘Then, my goddess, thou must wait the pleasure of these base ones! At least the young Apollo will have charms even for them.’
‘Ah, but who will represent him? This puny generation does not produce such figures as Pylades and Bathyllus—except among those Goths. Besides, Apollo must have golden hair; and our Greek race has intermixed itself so shamefully with these Egyptians, that our stage-troop is as dark as Andromeda, and we should have to apply again to those accursed Goths, who have nearly’ (with a bow) ‘all the beauty, and nearly all the money and the power, and will, I suspect, have the rest of it before I am safe out of this wicked world, because they have not nearly, but quite, all the courage. Now—Shall we ask a Goth to dance Apollo? for we can get no one else.’
Hypatia smiled in spite of herself at the notion. ‘That would be too shameful! I must forego the god of light himself, if I am to see him in the person of a clumsy barbarian.’
‘Then why not try my despised and rejected Aphrodite? Suppose we had her triumph, finishing with a dance of Venus Anadyomene. Surely that is a graceful myth enough.’
‘As a myth; but on the stage in reality?’
‘Not worse than what this Christian city has been looking at for many a year. We shall not run any danger of corrupting morality, be sure.’
Hypatia blushed.
‘Then you must not ask for my help.’