“Fool!—fanatic! But she is too beautiful! Win her I must and will!”
“Ah! dearest, noblest Hypatia! What have I done? Unthinking fool that I was! In the wish to save you trouble—In the hope that I could show you, by the aptness of my own plans, that my practical statesmanship was not altogether an unworthy helpmate for your loftier wisdom—wretch that I am, I have offended you; and I have ruined the cause of those very gods for whom, I swear, I am as ready to sacrifice myself as ever you can be!”
The last sentence had the effect which it was meant to have.
“Ruined the cause of the gods?” asked she, in a startled tone.
“Is it not ruined without your help? And what am I to understand from your words but that—hapless man that I am!—you leave me and them henceforth to our own unassisted strength?”
“The unassisted strength of the gods is omnipotence.”
“Be it so. But—why is Cyril, and not Hypatia, master of the masses of Alexandria this day? Why but because he and his have fought, and suffered, and died too, many a hundred of them, for their god, omnipotent as they believe him to be? Why are the old gods forgotten; my fairest logician?—for forgotten they are.”
Hypatia trembled from head to foot, and Orestes went on more blandly than ever.
“I will not ask an answer to that question of mine. All I entreat is forgiveness for—what for I know not: but I have sinned, and that is enough for me. What if I have been too confident—too hasty? Are you not the price for which I strain? And will not the preciousness of the victor’s wreath excuse some impatience in the struggle for it? Hypatia has forgotten who and what the gods have made her—she has not even consulted her own mirror, when she blames one of her innumerable adorers for a forwardness which ought to be rather imputed to him as a virtue.”
And Orestes stole meekly such a glance of adoration, that Hypatia blushed, and turned her face away. … After all, she was woman. And she was a fanatic. … And she was to be an empress. … And Orestes’s voice was as melodious, and his manner as graceful as ever charmed the heart of woman.
“But Pelagia?” she said, at last, recovering herself.
“Would that I had never seen the creature! But, after all, I really fancied that in doing what I have done I should gratify you.”
“Me?”
“Surely if revenge be sweet, as they say, it could hardly find a more delicate satisfaction than in degradation of one who—”
“Revenge, sir? Do you dream that I am capable of so base a passion?”
“I? Pallas forbid!” said Orestes, finding himself on the wrong path again. “But recollect that the allowing this spectacle to take place might rid you forever of an unpleasant—I will not say rival.”
“How, then?”
“Will not her reappearance on the stage, after all her proud professions of contempt for it, do something towards reducing her in the eyes of this scandalous little town to her true and native level? She will hardly dare thenceforth to go about parading herself as the consort of a god-descended hero, or thrusting herself unbidden into Hypatia’s presence, as if she were the daughter of a consul.”
“But I cannot—I cannot allow it even to her. After all, Orestes, she is a woman. And can I, philosopher as I am, help to degrade her even one step lower than she lies already?”
Hypatia had all but said “a woman even as I am”: but Neo-Platonic philosophy taught her better; and she checked the hasty assertion of anything like a common sex or common humanity between two beings so antipodal.
“Ah” rejoined Orestes, “that unlucky word ‘degrade’! Unthinking that I was, to use it, forgetting that she herself will be no more degraded in her own eyes, or anyone’s else, by hearing again the plaudits of those ‘dear Macedonians,’ on whose breath she has lived for years, than a peacock when he displays his train. Unbounded vanity and self-conceit are not unpleasant passions, after all, for their victim. After all, she is what she is, and her being so is no fault of yours. Oh, it must be! indeed it must!”
Poor Hypatia! The bait was too delicate, the tempter too wily; and yet she was ashamed to speak aloud the philosophic dogma which flashed a ray of comfort and resignation through her mind, and reminded her that after all there was no harm in allowing lower natures to develop themselves freely in that direction which Nature had appointed for them, and in which only they could fulfil the laws of their being, as necessary varieties in the manifold whole of the universe. So she cut the interview short with—
“If it must be, then. … I will now retire, and write the ode. Only, I refuse to have any communication whatsoever with—I am ashamed of even mentioning her name. I will send the ode to you, and she must adapt her dance to it as best she can. By her taste, or fancy rather, I will not be ruled.”
“And I,” said Orestes, with a profusion of thanks, “will retire to rack my faculties over the ‘dispositions.’ On this day week we exhibit—and conquer! Farewell, queen of wisdom! Your philosophy never shows to better advantage than when you thus wisely and gracefully subordinate that which is beautiful in itself to that which is beautiful relatively and practically.”
He departed; and Hypatia, half dreading her own thoughts, sat down at once to labour at the ode. Certainly it was a magnificent subject. What etymologies, cosmogonies, allegories, myths, symbolisms, between all heaven and earth, might she not introduce—if she could but banish that figure of Pelagia dancing to it all, which would not be banished, but hovered, like a spectre, in the background of all her imaginations. She became quite angry, first with Pelagia,
