The sun was descending lower. Above him, on the horizon westward, a storm-cloud was impending, and the last rays illumined the island with a soft, almost melancholy, glow.
The shepherd lad and his companion approached Pan's altar to make their evening sacrifice.
"Is it your belief, Arsinoë," continued Anatolius, "is it your faith that unknown brothers of ours shall pick up the threads of our existence, and, following the clue, go immeasurably farther than we? Do you believe that all shall not perish in the barbaric gloom which is sinking on Rome and Hellas? Ah, if that were so? If one could trust the future...."
"Yes!" exclaimed Arsinoë, a prophetic gleam in her sombre eyes, "the future is in us, in our madness and our anguish! Julian was right. Content without glory, in silence, strangers to all, and solitary among men, we must work out our work to the end. We must hide and cherish the last, the utmost spark amongst the ashes of the altar, that tribes and nations of the future may kindle from it new torches! Where we finish they shall begin. Let Hellas die! Men shall dig up her relics—unearth her divine fragments of marble, yea, over them shall weep and pray! From our tombs shall the yellowed leaves of the books we love be unsealed, and the ancient stories of Homer, the wisdom of Plato, shall be spelt out slowly anew, as by little children. And with Hellas, you and I shall live again!"
"And with us, revives the curse on us!" exclaimed Anatolius, "The struggle between Olympus and Golgotha will begin over again!—Why? And when shall that struggle end? Answer, sibyl, if thou canst!"
Arsinoë was silent, and her eyes fell. Then she glanced at Ammianus and pointed to him—
"There is one who will answer you better than I. Like ours, his heart is shared between Christ and Olympus, and yet he keeps the lucidity of his soul."
Ammianus Marcellinus, putting aside the manuscript by Clement, had been quietly listening to the discussion.
"In truth," said the Epicurean, addressing him, "we have now been friends for more than four months, and yet I do not know whether you are a Christian or a Hellenist?"
"Nor I myself," answered the young Ammianus frankly, with a blush.