Hypatia shuddered. Her name in company with Pelagia’s! And to this she had brought herself!
‘I have deserved it! I have sold myself to a lie and a disgrace! I have stooped to truckle, to intrigue! I have bound myself to a sordid trickster! Father! never mention his name to me again! I have leagued myself with the impure and the bloodthirsty, and I have my reward! No more politics for Hypatia from henceforth, my father; no more orations and lectures; no more pearls of Divine wisdom cast before swine. I have sinned in divulging the secrets of the Immortals to the mob. Let them follow their natures! Fool that I was, to fancy that my speech, my plots, could raise them above that which the gods had made them!’
‘Then you give up our lectures? Worse and worse! We shall be ruined utterly!’
‘We are ruined utterly already. Orestes? There is no help in him. I know the man too well, my father, not to know that he would give us up to-morrow to the fury of the Christians were his own base life—even his own baser office—in danger.’
‘Too true—too true! I fear,’ said the poor old man, wringing his hands in perplexity. ‘What will become of us,—of you, rather? What matter what happens to the useless old star-gazer? Let him die! To-day or next year is alike to him. But you, you! Let us escape by the canal. We may gather up enough, even without these jewels, which you refuse, to pay our voyage to Athens, and there we shall be safe with Plutarch; he will welcome you—all Athens will welcome you—we will collect a fresh school—and you shall be Queen of Athens, as you have been Queen of Alexandria!’
‘No, father. What I know, henceforth I will know for myself only. Hypatia will be from this day alone with the Immortal Gods!’
‘You will not leave me?’ cried the old man, terrified.
‘Never on earth!’ answered she, bursting into real human tears, and throwing herself on his bosom. ‘Never—never! father of my spirit as well as of my flesh!—the parent who has trained me, taught me, educated my soul from the cradle to use her wings!—the only human being who never misunderstood me—never thwarted me—never deceived me!’
‘My priceless child! And I have been the cause of your ruin!’
‘Not you!—a thousand times not you! I only am to blame! I tampered with worldly politics. I tempted you on to fancy that I could effect what I so rashly undertook. Do not accuse yourself unless you wish to break my heart! We can be happy together yet.—A palm-leaf hut in the desert, dates from the grove, and water from the spring—the monk dares be miserable alone in such a dwelling, and cannot we dare to be happy together in it?’