white roads leading to the village homes of Euripides and Demosthenes; the wind in the pine trees on Pentelicon, reminding them of the wind in the groves of Tusculum; the autumn leaves on the plane trees by the Ilissus; the silver moon seen from the water’s edge at Phaleron, swinging into the eastern void above the amethyst-dyed rocks of Hymettus; a sail on a summer star-lit night from AEgina to Piraeus—­all these things crept one by one into their conversation.  Here, Paulus recognised, was a group of young men on fire with a real emotion, cleansed in the presence of beauty and of great memories, witnesses afresh to a procreative Hellas.  When the party broke up he thanked his host for the happiest day he had spent in many months.

On the way home, after rounding the last foot hill, they saw the Acropolis across the plain.  The sun fell on the red in the natural rock and intensified the white of the marbles.  Against the sombre mountains the isolated citadel glowed inly, like a milk-white opal shot with rose.  Paulus caught his breath.  Was it here, his flame of life?

II

In the following weeks Paulus remembered some things in the conversation of this day, which at the time had made but slight impression on him.  The stories of professors and teachers had meant little until he knew at first hand the lentil suppers and brilliant talking at the house of Taurus, the ethical discussions with Peregrinus in his hovel on the outskirts of the city, and, most of all, the generous and ennobling hospitality, in his city house and villas, of the millionaire rhetorician, Herodes Atticus.  About Peregrinus Paulus could never make up his mind.  Was he the helpful teacher Gellius thought him, or the blatant charlatan of Lucian’s frequent attacks?  At any rate, the stories that were abroad about his wild youth, his connection with the strange sect known as Christians, his excommunication by them for profaning one of their rites, his expulsion from Rome by the Prefect of the City for his anarchistic harangues made a picturesque background for his cynic garb and ascetic preaching.  To Taurus and Atticus, on the other hand, Paulus could give himself with unreserved loyalty.  His hardy will responded to the severe standards of thought and conduct set by the Platonic philosopher, while the wilder heart within him seemed to seek and understand the rhetorician’s emotional nature and extravagant affections.

Indeed, as the spring passed into summer, all the elements in Paulus’s life seemed to confirm the glory of that day on the slopes of Hymettus when he had first felt sure of the significance Greece held for him.  The cumulative effect of his association with older men, his young friendships, his work toward his chosen goal, his grave but piercing pleasures, was to make him at home in Athens as he had never been at home in Rome.  He rested in the charm of the smaller, simpler city, where among all classes