The lad and the gray-bearded athlete stood face to face like mortal enemies ready for the fight, and Polykarp did not waver, although he, like most Christian youths, had been forbidden to take part in the wrestling-games in the Palaestra, and though he knew that he had to deal with a strong and practised antagonist.

He himself was indeed no weakling, and his stormy indignation added to his desire to measure himself against the hated seducer.

“Come on—­come on!” he cried; his eyes flashing, and leaning forward with his neck out-stretched and ready on his part for the struggle.  “Grip hold! you were a gladiator, or something of the kind, before you put on that filthy dress that you might break into houses at night, and go unpunished.  Make this sacred spot an arena, and if you succeed in making an end of me I will thank you, for what made life worth having to me, you have already ruined whether or no.  Only come on.  Or perhaps you think it easier to ruin the life of a woman than to measure your strength against her defender?  Clutch hold, I say, clutch hold, or—­”

“Or you will fall upon me,” said Paulus, whose arms had dropped by his side during the youth’s address.  He spoke in a quite altered tone of indifference.  “Throw yourself upon me, and do with me what you will; I will not prevent you.  Here I shall stand, and I will not fight, for you have so far hit the truth—­this holy place is not an arena.  But the Gaulish lady belongs neither to you nor to me, and who gives you a claim—?”

“Who gives me a right over her?” interrupted Polykarp, stepping close up to his questioner with sparkling eyes.  “He who permits the worshipper to speak of his God.  Sirona is mine, as the sun and moon and stars are mine, because they shed a beautiful light on my murky path.  My life is mine—­and she was the life of my life, and therefore I say boldly, and would say, if there were twenty such as Phoebicius here, she belongs to me.  And because I regarded her as my own, and so regard her still, I hate you and fling my scorn in your teeth—­you are like a hungry sheep that has got into the gardener’s flower-bed, and stolen from the stem the wonderful, lovely flower that he has nurtured with care, and that only blooms once in a hundred years—­like a cat that has sneaked into some marble hall, and that to satisfy its greed has strangled some rare and splendid bird that a traveller has brought from a distant land.  But you! you hypocritical robber, who disregard your own body with beastly pride, and sacrifice it to low brutality—­what should you know of the magic charm of beauty—­that daughter of heaven, that can touch even thoughtless children, and before which the gods themselves do homage!  I have a right to Sirona; for hide her where you will—­or even if the centurion were to find her, and to fetter her to himself with chains and rivets of brass—­ still that which makes her the noblest work of the Most High—­the image