‘Hear me!—hear me patiently this once, noble, beloved Hypatia! One more sneer of yours, and I may become again the same case-hardened fiend which you knew me of old—to all, at least, but you. Oh, do not think me ungrateful, forgetful! What do I not owe to you, whose pure and lofty words alone kept smouldering in me the dim remembrance that there was a Right, a Truth, an unseen world of spirits, after whose pattern man should aspire to live?’
She paused, and listened in wonder. What faith had she of her own? She would at least hear what he had found....
‘Hypatia, I am older than you—wiser than you, if wisdom be the fruit of the tree of knowledge. You know but one side of the medal, Hypatia, and the fairer; I have seen its reverse as well as its obverse. Through every form of human thought, of human action, of human sin and folly, have I been wandering for years, and found no rest—as little in wisdom as in folly, in spiritual dreams as in sensual brutality. I could not rest in your Platonism—I will tell you why hereafter. I went on to Stoicism, Epicurism, Cynicism, Scepticism, and in that lowest deep I found a lower depth, when I became sceptical of Scepticism itself.’
‘There is a lower deep still,’ thought Hypatia to herself, as she recollected last night’s magic; but she did not speak.
‘Then in utter abasement, I confessed myself lower than the brutes, who had a law, and obeyed it, while I was my own lawless God, devil, harpy, whirlwind.... I needed even my own dog to awaken in me the brute consciousness of my own existence, or of anything without myself. I took her, the dog, for my teacher, and obeyed her, for she was wiser than I. And she led me back—the poor dumb beast—like a God-sent and God-obeying angel, to human nature, to mercy, to self-sacrifice, to belief, to worship—to pure and wedded love.’
Hypatia started.... And in the struggle to hide her own bewilderment, answered almost without knowing it—
‘Wedded love?.... Wedded love? Is that, then, the paltry bait by which Raphael Aben-Ezra has been tempted to desert philosophy?’
‘Thank Heaven!’ said Raphael to himself. ‘She does not care for me, then! If she had, pride would have kept her from that sneer.’ Yes, my dear lady,’ answered he aloud, ‘to desert philosophy, to search after wisdom; because wisdom itself had sought for me, and found me. But, indeed, I had hoped that you would have approved of my following your example for once in my life, and resolving, like you, to enter into the estate of wedlock.’
‘Do not sneer at me!’ cried she, in her turn, looking up at him with shame and horror, which made him repent of uttering the words. ‘If you do not know—you will soon, too soon! Never mention that hateful dream to me, if you wish to have speech of me more!’
A pang of remorse shot through Raphael’s heart. Who but he himself had plotted that evil marriage? But she gave him no opportunity of answering her, and went on hurriedly—