‘How could you endure it, Tryphæna?’ she asked. ‘The blood of the Claudii and of deified emperors flows in my veins, yet if my frame had been wrenched with such pangs, I know not what my lips might not have said.’
‘Lady,’ said the slave-girl, ‘I hardly felt it. The spirit sustained the body. I thought of—’
‘Go on,’ said Octavia.
‘I thought of Him of whom I have read to you in the letter of Peter of Bethsaida; and how He had endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself; and I was not weary, and did not faint in my mind.’
‘How could the Crucified One help you?’
‘He is not the Crucified One now,’ answered Tryphæna. ‘He is the Risen, the Ascended: and He sits on the right hand of the Father.’
‘Oh that I could believe all this!’ said Octavia. ‘I have scarcely had a happy hour in all my life. I have been more miserable than any slave-girl. If He whom you called the Risen One were all that you say, why does He not help the innocent?’
‘He does help them,’ she said. ‘Not by delivering them out of all their troubles, but by enabling them to bear, and by making them feel that their brief troubles, which are but for a moment, are nothing to the eternal weight of glory.’
‘Did He help you?’
‘He did. As I lay outstretched on the rack I saw Him for a moment, His hand upraised to bless.’