“No, no, my child! you will forget all this as soon as possible; I know of a nobler Bridegroom for you; when once you have learned to know Him you will never long for any other.  Have you seen one single image in this house?”

“No,” replied Arsinoe, “but so far as regards Pollux—­”

“Listen to me” said the widow, “have I not told you of our loving Father in Heaven?  Have I not told you that the gods of the heathen are unreal beings which the vain imaginings of fools have endowed with all the weaknesses and crimes of humanity?  Can you not understand how silly it is to pray to stones?  What power can reside in these frail figures of brass or marble?

“Idols we call them.  He who carves them, serves them and offers sacrifice to them; aye and a great sacrifice, for he devotes his best powers, to their service.  Do you understand me?”

“No—­Art is certainly a lofty thing, and Pollux is a good man, full of the divinity as he works.”

“Wait a while, only wait—­you will soon learn to understand,” Paulina had answered, drawing Arsinoe towards her, and had added, at first speaking gently but then more sternly:  “Now go to bed and pray to your gracious Father in Heaven that he may enlighten your heart.  You must forget the carved image-maker, and I forbid you ever to speak in my presence again of such a man.”

Arsinoe had grown up a heathen, she clung with affection to the gods of her fathers and hoped for happier days after the first bitterness of the loss of her father and the separation from her brothers and sisters was past.  She was little disposed to sacrifice her young love and all her earthly happiness for spiritual advantages of which she scarcely comprehended the value.  Her father had always spoken of the Christians with hatred and contempt.  She now saw that they could be kind and helpful, and the doctrine that there was a loving God in Heaven who cared for all men as his children appealed to her soul; but that we ought to forgive our enemies, to remember our sins, and to repent of them, and to regard all the pleasure and amusement which the gay city of Alexandria could offer as base and worthless—­this was absurd and foolish.

And what great sins had she committed?  Could a loving God require of her that she should mar all her best days because as a child she had pilfered a cake or broken a pitcher; or, as she grew older had sometimes been obstinate or disobedient?  Surely not.  And then was an artist, a kind faithful soul like her tall Pollux, to be odious in the eyes of God the Father of all, because he was able to make such wonderful things as that head of her mother, for instance?  If this really was so she would rather, a thousand times rather, lift her hands in prayer to the smiling Aphrodite, roguish Eros, beautiful Apollo, and all the nine Muses who protected her Pollux, than to Him.

An obscure aversion rose up in her soul against the stern woman who could not understand her, and of whose teaching and admonitions she scarcely took in half; and she rejected many a word of the widow’s which might otherwise easily have found room in her heart, only because it was spoken by the cold-mannered woman who at every hour seemed to try to lay some fresh restraint upon her.