She could not bear the thought, for she had been accustomed to regard the Serapeum as the very heart of the universe—­the centre and fulcrum on which the balance of the earth depended; to her, Serapis himself was inseparable from his temple and its atmosphere of magical and mystical power.  Every prophecy, every Sibylline text, every oracle must be false if the overthrow of that image could remain unpunished—­if the destruction of the universe failed to follow, as surely as a, flood ensues from a breach in a dyke.  How indeed could it be otherwise, according to the explanation which her teacher had given her of the Neo-Platonic conception of the nature of the god?

It was not Serapis but the great and unapproachable One—­supreme above comprehension and sublime beyond conception, for whose majesty every name was too mean, the fount and crown of Good and Beauty, in whole all that exists ever has been and ever shall be.  He it was who, like a brimful vessel, overflowed with the quintessence of what we call divine; and from this effluence emanated the divine Mind, the pure intelligence which is to the One what light is to the sun.  This Mind with its vitality—­a life not of time but of eternity—­could stir or remain passive as it listed; it included a Plurality, while the One was Unity, and forever indivisible.  The concept of each living creature proceeded from the second:  The eternal Mind; and this vivifying and energizing intelligence comprehended the prototypes of every living being, hence, also, of the immortal gods—­not themselves but their idea or image.  And just as the eternal Mind proceeded from the One, so, in the third place, did the Soul of the universe proceed from the second; that Soul whose twofold nature on one side touched the supreme Mind, and, on the other, the baser world of matter.  This was the immortal Aphrodite, cradled in bliss in the pure radiance of the ideal world and yet unable to free herself from the gross clay of matter fouled by sensuality and the vehicle of sin.

The head of Serapis was the eternal Mind; in his broad breast slept the Soul of the Universe, and the prototypes of all created things; the world of matter was the footstool under his feet.  All the subordinate forces obeyed him, the mighty first Cause, whose head towered up to the realm of the incoinprellensible and inconceivable One.  He was the sum total of the universe, the epitome of things created; and at the same time he was the power which gave them life and intelligence and preserved them from perishing by perpetual procreation.  It was his might that kept the multiform structure of the material and psychical world in perennial harmony.  All that lived—­Nature and its Soul as much as Man and his Soul—­were inseparably dependent on him.  If he—­if Serapis were to fall, the order of the universe must be destroyed; and with him:  The Synthesis of the Universe—­the Universe itself must cease to exist.

But what would survive would not be the nothingness—­the void of which her grandmother had spoken; it would be the One—­the cold, ineffable, incomprehensible One!  This world would perish with Serapis; but perhaps it might please that One to call another world into being out of his overflowing essence, peopled by other and different beings.