“Your Isis has nothing in common with the Mother of our God, and how can you dare to compare your Osiris with the Lord who redeemed the world from death?”

Olympius, startled at the decision of her tone, rose from his seat, but he went on, as though he had expected this refusal: 

“I will tell you—­I will show you.  Osiris—­we will take him as being an Egyptian god, instead of Serapis in whose mysterious attributes you would find much to commend itself even to a Christian soul—­Osiris, like your Master, voluntarily passed through death—­to redeem the world from death—­in this resembling your Christ.  He, the Risen One, gives new light, and life, and blossom, and verdure to all that is darkened, dead and withered.  All that seems to have fallen a prey to death is, by him, restored to a more beautiful existence; he, who has risen again, can bring even the departed soul to a resurrection; and when during this life its high aims have kept it unspotted by the dust of the sensual life, and he, as the judge, sees that it has preserved itself worthy of its pure First Cause, he allows it to return to the eternal and supreme Spirit whence it originally proceeded.

“And do not you, too, strive after purification, to the end that your soul may find an everlasting home in the radiant realms?  Again and again do we meet with the same ideas, only they bear different forms and names.  Try to feel the true bearing of my words, and then you will gladly join in the pathetic appeal to the sublime god to return.  How like he is to your Lord!  Is he not, like your Christ, a Saviour, and risen from the dead?  The Temple or the Church—­both are the sanctuaries of the Deity.  By the ivy-wreathed altar of the weeping goddess, at the foot of the tall cypresses which cast their mysterious shadows on the snowy whiteness of the marble steps on which lies the bier of the god, you will feel the sacred awe which falls upon every pure soul when it is conscious of the presence of the Deity—­call Him what you will.

“Isis, whom you now know, and who is neither more nor less than a personification of divine mercy, will make you a return by restoring you to the freedom for which you pine.  She will allow you to find a home in some Christian house through our intervention, in acknowledgment of the pious service you are rendering, not to her but to the faith in divine goodness.  There you may live with your little brother, as free as heart can desire.  To-morrow you will go with Gorgo to the temple of the goddess . . .”

But Agne broke in on his speech:  “No, I will not go with her!”

Her cheeks were scarlet and her breath came short and fast with excitement as she went on: 

“I will not, I must not, I cannot!  Do what you will with me:  sell me and my brother, put us to turn a mill—­but I will not sing in the temple!”

Olympius knit his brows; his beard quivered and his lips parted in wrath, but he controlled himself and going close to the girl he laid his hand on her shoulder and said in a deep grave tone of fatherly admonition: