The face of Arsinoë became sad and tranquil. She looked at Julian pityingly, without thrusting him away—
"Unhappy man!... You are unhappy as I. You yourself know not whither you wish to lead me. On whom do you reckon? In whom put your trust? Your gods are decaying, dead.... I will flee into the desert, far from contaminating fables, far from this terrifying smell of rottenness. Leave me.... I can aid you in nothing.... Go...."
Wrath and passion shone in Julian's eyes; but more calmly still, and so pityingly that his very heart shivered and froze as under the blow of deadly insult, she went on—
"Why do you delude yourself? Are you not wavering, perishable, as we all are? Think: what means this charity of yours? These guest-houses—these sermons of the sacrificial priests? All that is new, unknown to the ancient heroes of Hellas.... Julian! Julian! are your gods the ancient Olympians, luminous and pitiless—terrible sons of the azure—rejoicing in the blood of victims and in the pains of mortals? Human blood and suffering were the very nectar of the old gods! Yours, seduced by the faith of the fishermen of Capernaum, are sick and humble weaklings, full of compassion for men.... But that pity is mortal to your gods!
"Yes," she continued implacably; "you are sick, you are all too weak for your wisdom! That is your penalty, Hellenists of too late a day. You have strength neither for good nor for evil. You are neither day nor night, nor life nor death; your heart wavers, here and there. You have left one bank, and cannot reach the other. You believe, and you do not believe. You betray yourselves, you hesitate; you will, and you do not will, because you do not know on what to set your will. They alone are strong who, seeing one truth, are blind to all other. They will conquer us—us who are wise and weak!"
Julian raised his head with an effort, as if waking from some evil dream, and said—
"You are unjust, Arsinoë. My soul does not know fear, nor my will weakness. The forces of destiny are leading me. If it is written that I shall die too soon—and I know it is so—my death shall not be unworthy of the sight of the gods. Farewell. I bear you no anger, because now to me you are as one dead!"
IX
Above the marble portico of the guest-house of Apollo, built for the poor, for pilgrims and the disabled, ran these letters in Homeric Greek along the pediment: