‘What care I? How can I tell?’ asked Hypatia, who suspected and dreaded that she could tell.
‘Pelagia herself!’
Hypatia rose angrily.
‘This, sir, at least, is too much! It was not enough for you, it seems, to claim, or rather to take for granted, so imperiously, so mercilessly, a conditional promise—weakly, weakly made, in the vain hope that you would help forward aspirations of mine which you have let lie fallow for months—in which I do not believe that you sympathise now!—It was not enough for you to declare yourself publicly yesterday a Christian, and to come hither this morning to flatter me into the belief that you will dare, ten days hence, to restore the worship of the gods whom you have abjured!—It was not enough to plan without me all those movements in which you told me I was to be your fellow-counsellor—the very condition which you yourself offered!—It was not enough for you to command me to sit in that theatre, as your bait, your puppet, your victim, blushing and shuddering at sights unfit for the eyes of gods and men:—but, over and above all this, I must assist in the renewed triumph of a woman who has laughed down my teaching, seduced away my scholars, braved me in my very lecture-room—who for four years has done more than even Cyril himself to destroy all the virtue and truth which I have toiled to sow—and toiled in vain! Oh, beloved gods! where will end the tortures through which your martyr must witness for you to a fallen race?’
And, in spite of all her pride, and of Orestes’s presence, her eyes filled with scalding tears.
Orestes’s eyes had sunk before the vehemence of her just passion; but as she added the last sentence in a softer and sadder tone, he raised them again, with a look of sorrow and entreaty as his heart whispered—
‘Fool!—fanatic! But she is too beautiful! Win her I must and will!’
‘Ah! dearest, noblest Hypatia! What have I done? Unthinking fool that I was! In the wish to save you trouble—In the hope that I could show you, by the aptness of my own plans, that my practical statesmanship was not altogether an unworthy helpmate for your loftier wisdom—wretch that I am, I have offended you; and I have ruined the cause of those very gods for whom, I swear, I am as ready to sacrifice myself as ever you can be!’
The last sentence had the effect which it was meant to have.
‘Ruined the cause of the gods?’ asked she, in a startled tone.