“Well, well,” she said hurriedly.  “But you must not, you will not require me to do anything that is beyond my strength, or that would involve breaking my word.  To-morrow is not, and cannot be yours; it must be a day of leave-taking and parting.  After that I am yours, I cannot live without you.  I want you and nothing else.  Your happiness shall be mine; only, do not make it too hard to me to part from all that has been dear to me from my infancy.  Shut your eyes to tomorrow’s proceedings, and then—­oh! if only we were sure of the right path, if only we could tread it together!  We know each other so perfectly, and I know, I feel, that it will perhaps be a comfort to our hearts to be patient with each other over matters which our judgment fails to comprehend or even to approve.  I might be so unutterably happy; but my heart trembles within me, and I am not, I dare not be quite glad yet.”

CHAPTER XII.

The young soldier was heartily welcomed by his friends of the merchant’s family; but old Damia was a little uneasy at the attitude which he and Gorgo had taken up after their first greeting.  He was agitated and grave, she was eager and excited, with an air of determined enterprise.

Was Eros at the bottom of it all?  Were the young people going to carry out the jest of their childhood in sober earnest?  The young officer was handsome and attractive enough, and her granddaughter after all was but a woman.

So far as Constantine was concerned the old lady had no personal objection to him; nay, she appreciated his steady, grave manliness and, for his own sake, was very glad to see him once more; but to contemplate the ship-builder’s son—­the grandson of a freedman—­a Christian and devoted to the Emperor, even though he were a prefect or of even higher grade—­as a possible suitor for her Gorgo, the beautiful heiress of the greater part of her wealth—­the centre of attraction to all the gilded youth of Alexandria—­this was too much for her philosophy; and, as she had never in her life restrained the expression of her sentiments, though she gave him a friendly hand and the usual greeting, she very soon showed him, by her irony and impertinence, that she was as hostile to his creed as ever.

She put her word in on every subject, and when, presently, Demetrius—­who, after Dada’s rebuff, had come on to see his uncle—­began speaking of the horses he had been breeding for Marcus, and Constantine enquired whether any Arabs from his stables were to be purchased in the town, Damia broke out: 

“You out-do your crucified God in most things I observe!  He could ride on an ass, and a stout Egyptian nag is not good enough for you.”

However, the young officer was not to be provoked; and though he was very well able to hold his own in a strife of words, he kept himself under control and pretended to see nothing in the old woman’s taunts but harmless jesting.