"I want you to be frankly my foe!" exclaimed the young girl. "You must not pass by like this, without telling me what you are. Sometimes I dream that it would be better if Rome and Athens were utterly ruined! Better burn a corpse than leave it unburied! And all our friends here—grammarians, rhetoricians—poets who write Imperial eulogies—all these are the rotting body of Greece and Rome. In their company one grows afraid, as among the shroudless dead.... Oh, you may triumph, Galileans! Soon corpses and ruins are all that will remain on earth!... And you, Julian.... But no!... It is impossible! I do not believe that you are with them and against Hellas—against me!..."
Julian sprang up before her, pale and mute, longing to burst away. She held him back.
"Tell me that you are my enemy," she said with heart-broken challenge in her voice.
"Arsinoë!... Why——"
"Tell me all!... I must know. Do you not feel how near we are? Or are you indeed afraid to speak?"
"In two days I leave Athens," murmured Julian.
"Why?—Where are you going?"
"The Emperor has recalled me to Court—to die perhaps. I may now be looking at you for the last time."
"Julian, you do not believe in Him?" cried Arsinoë, seeking to read the eyes of the monk.
"Speak lower!"