What the answer was, he could not hear but the next moment a sweet heavy scent, as of narcotic gums, filled the room—mutterings of incantations—and then a blaze of light, in which the curtain vanished, and disclosed to his astonished eyes, enveloped in a glory of luminous smoke, the hag standing by a tripod, and, kneeling by her, Hypatia herself, robed in pure white, glittering with diamonds and gold, her lips parted, her head thrown back, her arms stretched out in an agony of expectation.
In an instant, before he had time to stir, she had sprung through the blaze, and was kneeling at his feet.
‘Phoebus! beautiful, glorious, ever young! Hear me! only a moment! only this once!’
Her drapery had caught fire from the tripod, but she did not heed it. Philammon instinctively clasped her in his arms, and crushed it out, as she cried—
‘Have mercy on me! Tell me the secret! I will obey thee! I have no self—I am thy slave! Kill me, if thou wilt: but speak!’
The blaze sank into a soft, warm, mellow gleam, and beyond it what appeared?
The negro-woman, with one finger upon her lips, as with an imploring, all but despairing look, she held up to him her little crucifix.
He saw it. What thoughts flashed through him, like the lightning bolt, at that blessed sign of infinite self-sacrifice, I say not; let those who know it judge for themselves. But in another instant he had spurned from him the poor deluded maiden, whose idolatrous ecstasies he saw instantly were not meant for himself, and rushed desperately across the room, looking for an outlet.
He found a door in the darkness—a room-a window—and in another moment he had leapt twenty feet into the street, rolled over, bruised and bleeding, rose again like an Antaeus, with new strength, and darted off towards the archbishop’s house.
And poor Hypatia lay half senseless on the floor, with the Jewess watching her bitter tears—not merely of disappointment, but of utter shame. For as Philammon fled she had recognised those well-known features; and the veil was lifted from her eyes, and the hope and the self-respect of Theon’s daughter were gone for ever.