“Fair and fragrant, like myself, are they?” she made reply. “Give them to me.” She took them, and bent over them. “The blushing rose,” she said, [pg 126]gravely, “the stately lily, the royal carnation, the golden moly, the purple amaranth, the green bryon, the diosanthos, the sertula, the sweet modest saliunca, fit emblems of Callista. Well, in a few hours they will have faded; yes, they will get more and more like her.”
She paused and looked him steadily in the face, and then continued: “Agellius, I once had a slave who belonged to your religion. She had been born in a Christian family, and came into my possession on her master’s death. She was unlike any one I have seen before or since; she cared for nothing, yet was not morose or peevish or hard-hearted. She died young in my service. Shortly before her end she had a dream. She saw a company of bright shades, clothed in white, like the hours which circle round the god of day. They were crowned with flowers, and they said to each other, ‘She ought to have a token too.’ So they took her hand, and led her to a most beautiful lady, as stately as Juno and as sweet as Ariadne, so radiant in countenance that they themselves suddenly looked like Ethiopians by the side of her. She, too, was crowned with flowers, and these so dazzling that they might be the stars of heaven or the gems of Asia for what Chione could tell. And that fair goddess (angel you call her) said, ‘My dear, here is something for you from my Son. He sends you by me a red rose for your love, a white lily for your chastity, purple violets to strew your grave, and green palms to flourish over it.’ Is this the reason why you give me [pg 127]flowers, Agellius, that I may rank with Chione? and is this their interpretation?”
“Callista,” he answered, “it is my heart’s most fervent wish, it is my mind’s vivid anticipation, that the day may come when you will receive such a crown, nay, a brighter one.”
“And you are come, of course, to philosophize to me, and to put me in the way of dying like Chione,” she made answer. “I implore your pardon. You are offering me flowers, it seems, not for a bridal wreath, but for a funeral urn.”
“Is it wonderful,” said Agellius, “that the two wishes should have gone together in my heart; and that while I trusted and prayed that you might have the same Master in heaven as I have myself, I also hoped you would have the same service, the same aims, the same home upon earth?”
“And that you should speak one word for your Master and two for yourself!” she retorted.
“It has been by feeling how much you could be to me,” he answered, “that I have been led to think how much my Master may be doing for you already, and how much in time to come you might do for Him. Callista, do not urge me with your Greek subtlety, or expect me to analyze my feelings more precisely than I have the ability to do. May I calmly tell you the state of my mind, as I do know it, and will you patiently listen?”
She signified her willingness, and he continued—“This only I know,” he said, “what I have experienced [pg 128]ever since I first heard you converse, that there is between you and me a unity of thought so strange that I should have deemed it could not have been, before I found it actually to exist, between any two persons whatever; and which, widely as we are separated in opinion and habit, and differently as we have been brought up, is to me inexplicable. I find it difficult to explain what I mean; we disagree certainly on the most important subjects, yet there is an unaccountable correspondence in the views we take of things, in our impressions, in the line in which our minds move, and the issues to which they come, in our judgment of what is great and little, and the manner in which objects affect our feelings. When I speak to my uncle, when I speak to your brother, I do not understand them, nor they me. We are moving in different spheres, and I am solitary, however much they talk. But to my astonishment, I find between you and me one language. Is it wonderful that, in proportion to my astonishment, I am led to refer it to one cause, and think that one Master Hand must have engraven those lines on the soul of each of us? Is it wonderful that I should fancy that He who has made us alike has made us for each other, and that the very same persuasives by which I bring you to cast your eyes on me, may draw you also to cast yourself in adoration at the feet of my Master?”
For an instant tears seemed about to start from Callista’s eyes, but she repressed the emotion, if it were such, and answered with impetuosity, “Your Master! [pg 129]who is your Master? what know I of your Master? what have you ever told me of your Master? I suppose it is an esoteric doctrine which I am not worthy to know; but so it is, here you have been again and again, and talked freely of many things, yet I am in as much darkness about your Master as if I had never seen you. I know He died; I know too that Christians say He lives. In some fortunate island, I suppose; for, when I have asked, you have got rid of the subject as best you could. You have talked about your law and your various duties, and what you consider right, and what is forbidden, and of some of the old writers of your sect, and of the Jews before them; but if, as you imply, my wants and aspirations are the same as yours, what have you done towards satisfying them? what have you done for that Master towards whom you now propose to lead me? No!” she continued, starting up, “you have watched those wants and aspirations for yourself, not for Him; you have taken interest in them, you have cherished them, as if you were the author, you the object of them. You profess to believe in One True God, and to reject every other; and now you are implying that the Hand, the Shadow of that God is on my mind and heart. Who is this God? where? how? in what? O Agellius, you have stood in the way of Him, ready to speak for yourself, using Him as a means to an end.”
“O Callista,” said Agellius, in an agitated voice, when he could speak, “do my ears hear aright? do you really wish to be taught who the true God is?”