He had left her a child.  He found her a beautiful woman.  What transformation is so magical, so charming, as this?  To see the uncertain lines of-youth rounded into firmness and symmetry, to discover the half-ripe, merry, changing face of the girl matured into perfect loveliness, and looking at you with calm, clear, serious eyes, not forgetting the past, but fully conscious of the changed present—­this is to behold a miracle in the flesh.

“Where have you been, these two years?” said Athenais, as they walked together through the garden of lilies where they had so often played.

“In a land of tiresome dreams,” answered Hermas; “but you have wakened me, and I am never going back again.”

It was not to be supposed that the sudden disappearance of Hermas from among his former associates could long remain unnoticed.  At first it was a mystery.  There was a fear, for two or three days, that he might be lost.  Some of his more intimate companions maintained that his devotion had led him out into the desert to join the anchorites.  But the news of his return to the House of the Golden Pillars, and of his new life as its master, filtered quickly through the gossip of the city.

Then the church was filled with dismay and grief and reproach.  Messengers and letters were sent to Hermas.  They disturbed him a little, but they took no hold upon him.  It seemed to him as if the messengers spoke in a strange language.  As he read the letters there were words blotted out of the writing which made the full sense unintelligible.

His old companions came to reprove him for leaving them, to warn him of the peril of apostasy, to entreat him to return.  It all sounded vague and futile.  They spoke as if he had betrayed or offended some one; but when they came to name the object of his fear—­the one whom he had displeased, and to whom he should return—­he heard nothing; there was a blur of silence in their speech.  The clock pointed to the hour, but the bell did not strike.  At last Hermas refused to see them any more.

One day John the Presbyter stood in the atrium.  Hermas was entertaining Libanius and Athenais in the banquet-hall.  When the visit of the Presbyter was announced, the young master loosed a collar of gold and jewels from his neck, and gave it to his scribe.

“Take this to John of Antioch, and tell him it is a gift from his former pupil—­as a token of remembrance, or to spend for the poor of the city.  I will always send him what he wants, but it is idle for us to talk together any more.  I do not understand what he says.  I have not gone to the temple, nor offered sacrifice, nor denied his teaching.  I have simply forgotten.  I do not think about those things any longer.  I am only living.  A happy man wishes him all happiness and farewell.”

But John let the golden collar fall on the marble floor.  “Tell your master that we shall talk together again, after all,” said he, as he passed sadly out of the hall.