His mother, as if they had been completely alone, murmured hastily and joyously—
"O my son, I thought I should never see you again; I would have set out for Alexandria—O I would have found you even in the desert! But now all is over, is it not? Tell me that you will not go! Wait until I die! Afterwards do what you will...."
The old man resumed—
"Do you hear me, Juventinus?"
"Old man," answered the patrician mother, "you will not carry off a son from her that bore him!... Listen, if it must be so, I will deny the faith of my fathers; I will believe in the Crucified!... I will become a nun!"
"Ah, pagan! thou canst not understand the law of Christ. A mother cannot be a nun, nor can a nun be still a mother."
"I have borne him in anguish; he is mine!"
"It is not the soul, but the body, that you love."
The patrician woman cast at Didimus a look full of hatred.
"Be then accursed for your lying speeches," she exclaimed; "accursed, you stealers of children—tempters of the guileless! ye black-robed fearers of the celestial light—slaves of the Crucified! destroyers of all beauty and joy!"