‘Is it not ruined without your help? And what am I to understand from your words but that—hapless man that I am!—you leave me and them henceforth to our own unassisted strength?’
‘The unassisted strength of the gods is omnipotence.’
‘Be it so. But—why is Cyril, and not Hypatia, master of the masses of Alexandria this day? Why but because he and his have fought, and suffered, and died too, many a hundred of them, for their god, omnipotent as they believe him to be? Why are the old gods forgotten; my fairest logician?—for forgotten they are.’
Hypatia trembled from head to foot, and Orestes went on more blandly than ever.
‘I will not ask an answer to that question of mine. All I entreat is forgiveness for—what for I know not: but I have sinned, and that is enough for me. What if I have been too confident—too hasty? Are you not the price for which I strain? And will not the preciousness of the victor’s wreath excuse some impatience in the struggle for it? Hypatia has forgotten who and what the gods have made her—she has not even consulted her own mirror, when she blames one of her innumerable adorers for a forwardness which ought to be rather imputed to him as a virtue.’
And Orestes stole meekly such a glance of adoration, that Hypatia blushed, and turned her face away.... After all, she was woman. And she was a fanatic.... And she was to be an empress.... And Orestes’s voice was as melodious, and his manner as graceful as ever charmed the heart of woman.
‘But Pelagia?’ she said, at last, recovering herself.
‘Would that I had never seen the creature! But, after all, I really fancied that in doing what I have done I should gratify you.’
‘Me?’
‘Surely if revenge be sweet, as they say, it could hardly find a more delicate satisfaction than in degradation of one who—’