There Philammon awaited a full half-hour. It seemed to him hours, days, years. And yet Raphael did not return: and yet no guards appeared. Was the strange Jew a traitor? Impossible!—his face had shown a desperate earnestness of terror as intense as Philammon’s own. … Yet why did he not return?
Perhaps he had found out that the streets were clear; their mutual fears groundless. … What meant that black knot of men some two hundred yards off, hanging about the mouth of the side street, just opposite the door which led to her lecture-room? He moved to watch them: they had vanished. He lay down again and waited. … There they were again. It was a suspicious post. That street ran along the back of the Caesareum, a favourite haunt of monks, communicating by innumerable entries and back buildings with the great Church itself. … And yet, why should there not be a knot of monks there? What more common in every street of Alexandria? He tried to laugh away his own fears. And yet they ripened, by the very intensity of thinking on them, into certainty. He knew that something terrible was at hand. More than once he looked out from his hiding-place—the knot of men were still there; … it seemed to have increased, to draw nearer. If they found him, what would they not suspect? What did he care? He would die for her, if it came to that—not that it could come to that: but still he must speak to her—he must warn her. Passenger after passenger, carriage after carriage passed along the street: student after student entered the lecture-room; but he never saw them, not though they passed him close. The sun rose higher and higher, and turned his whole blaze upon the corner where Philammon crouched, till the pavement scorched like hot iron, and his eyes were dazzled by the blinding glare: but he never heeded it. His whole heart, and sense, and sight, were riveted upon that well-known door, expecting it to open. …
At last a curricle, glittering with silver, rattled round the corner and stopped opposite him. She must becoming now. The crowd had vanished. Perhaps it was, after all, a fancy of his own. No; there they were, peeping round the corner, close to the lecture-room—the hellhounds! A slave brought out an embroidered cushion—and then Hypatia herself came forth, looking more glorious than ever; her lips set in a sad firm smile; her eyes uplifted, inquiring, eager, and yet gentle, dimmed by some great inward awe, as if her soul was far away aloft, and face to face with God.
In a moment he sprang up to her, caught her robe convulsively, threw himself on his knees before her—
“Stop! Stay! You are going to destruction!”
Calmly she looked down upon him.
“Accomplice of witches! Would you make of Theon’s daughter a traitor like yourself?”
He sprang up, stepped back, and stood stupefied with shame and despair. …
She believed him guilty, then! … It was the will of God!
The plumes of the horses were waving far down the street before he recovered himself, and rushed after her, shouting he knew not what.
It was too late! A dark wave of men rushed from the ambuscade, surged up round the car … swept forward … she had disappeared! and as Philammon followed breathless, the horses galloped past him madly homeward with the empty carriage.
Whither were they dragging her? To the Caesareum, the Church of God Himself? Impossible! Why thither of all places of the earth? Why did the mob, increasing momentarily by hundreds, pour down upon the beach, and return brandishing flints, shells, fragments of pottery?
She was upon the church steps before he caught them up, invisible among the crowd; but he could track her by the fragments of her dress.
Where were her gay pupils now? Alas! they had barricaded themselves shamefully in the Museum, at the first rush which swept her from the door of the lecture-room. Cowards! he would save her!
And he struggled in vain to pierce the dense mass of Parabolani and monks, who, mingled with the fishwives and dockworkers, leaped and yelled around their victim. But what he could not do another and a weaker did—even the little porter. Furiously—no one knew how or whence—he burst up as if from the ground in the thickest of the crowd, with knife, teeth, and nails, like a venomous wildcat, tearing his way towards his idol. Alas! he was torn down himself, rolled over the steps, and lay there half dead in an agony of weeping, as Philammon sprang up past him into the church.
Yes. On into the church itself! Into the cool dim shadow, with its fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and blazing altar, and great pictures looking from the walls athwart the gorgeous gloom. And right in front, above the altar, the colossal Christ watching unmoved from off the wall, His right hand raised to give a blessing—or a curse?
On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy pavement—up the chancel steps themselves—up to the altar—right underneath the great still Christ: and there even those hellhounds paused.
She shook herself free from her tormentors, and springing back, rose for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against the dusky mass around—shame and indignation in those wide clear eyes, but not a stain of fear.
