“A lower flight, if you please, just now,” said Aristo, interrupting her. “I do really wish a serious word with you about Agellius. He’s a fellow I can’t help liking, in spite of his misanthropy. Let me plead his cause. Like him or not yourself, still he has a full purse; and you will do a service to yourself and to the gods of Greece, and to him too, if you will smile on him. Smile on him at least for a time; we will go to Carthage when you are tired. His looks have very little in them of a Christian left; you may blow it away with your breath.”
“One might do worse than be a Christian,” she answered slowly, “if all is true that I have heard of them.”
Aristo started up in irritation. “By all the gods of Olympus,” he said, “this is intolerable! If a man wants a tormentor, I commend him to a girl like you. What has ailed thee some time past, you silly child? What have I done to you that you should have got so cross and contrary and so hard to please?”
“I mean,” she said, “if I were a Christian, life would be more bearable.”
“Bearable!” he echoed; “bearable! ye gods! more bearable to have Styx and Tartarus, the Furies and their snakes, in this world as well as in the next? to have evil within and without, to hate one’s self and to be hated of all men! to live the life of an ass, and to die the death of a dog! Bearable! But hark! I hear Agellius’s step on the staircase. Callista, dear Callista, be yourself. Listen to reason.”
But Callista would not listen to reason, if her brother was its embodiment; but went on with her singing:—
“For what is Afric but the home
Of burning Phlegethon?
What the low beach and silent gloom,
And chilling mists of that dull river,