“Ah, Hermione! as that noble face bent over me, and I gazed up at it, I felt at once that thrill which is half-awe, half-joy, like that foreshadowing of the break of day, which makes the little bird stir in its nest—for though as yet nothing is clear, and nothing defined, the day is near.
“The day was dawning at that moment; the day of love which has been so beautiful and fair ever since. Nor can night cast any shadow over that day of love, with its dark mantle, for my love stretches forward to that city fairer than Alexandria, fairer than Rome, where there is no night and no darkness at all, for God is the Light.
“I must, however, go on with my narrative of events. The youth who snatched me from the water, and laid me on the turf with the child, is named Heraclitus. His father was a friend and companion in arms of dear Claudius, and he had come from Marseilles to seek education and advantages here in Alexandria for his only son.
“You may be sure, Hermione, that my father, Casca, bade both father and son a warm welcome, and from the first there seemed a bond between us all. When the father of Heraclitus returned to Marseilles, Heraclitus was left with my father and good Claudius.
“Heraclitus showed from the first the greatest powers of mind and body, and from the very first he seemed to account it his greatest happiness to be with us. Ah, Hermione! with me.
“Soon that gentle thrill of awakening in my heart grew stronger. Soon I knew that I was loved as my father Casca had loved my fair mother, Ianthe, as Claudius had loved my beautiful aunt Hyacintha.
“The cup of bliss seemed full to overflowing, when there came a drop of exceeding bitterness to spoil the sweetness. Good old Claudius, in passing down the long flight of steps from the Museum, fell heavily, and it was with difficulty that Heraclitus brought him home.
“For many weeks he lay helpless and uncomplaining. Sometimes he would say, ‘It was a strange end for a soldier, to lie on soft cushions, and be tended by women’s hands.’
“We did tend him carefully, and cheered his last days with the warmth of a love we might well bear one who had been so closely bound up in life with my father Casca and my aunt the Vestal Maxima.
“Claudius spoke much of the past, but little of the present. The farther off the scene, the clearer the vision. My father, always absorbed in his manuscript, would sometimes raise his head and smile, as Claudius spoke of Verulam, and the small upper chamber there and little Hyacintha and her hair shining under the light of the silver lamp which hung from the roof. Then of Ebba and her conversion to the faith of the Christian; his own vehement and angry persecution of the Christians, and of the dark dungeon into which he entered, bearing the dead Jewish girl in his arms.