During these days, Arius and Theckla had become fast friends. She was a beautiful child, but an Egyptian of the aristocratic class. Her hair, which was as black as jet, curled profusely all around and over her shapely head in luxuriant masses. Her forehead was low and broad, the face a perfect oval from the full temples to the point of the plump, delicate, projecting chin, while the small, full-lipped mouth was red as a cherry, the upper lip notably short and voluptuous. The black, arched, delicate eyebrows nearly met at the root of the high, straight, delicately chiseled nose, and the large, dark eyes, soft, black, and fathomless, free alike from fire and languishment, were of a kind found nowhere on earth except along the Nile--full, wide-open eyes that seemed calm and untroubled as the sightless orbs of any sphinx, yet full of mystery as is the old, old land of Kem. Arius soon discovered that the girl was remarkably bright and quick, but that she could neither read nor write, all the instruction she had ever received (and she had been very carefully taught) having been communicated by oral teaching. Her native tongue was, of course, that of Egypt, but she spoke Greek with fluency, and Latin also, but with difficulty and hesitation. On the evening of the day on which she had been rescued from the waves, the boy and girl were playing and chatting together in the shade before the cottage. The sun was just sinking beyond the distant mountain-range, when the girl said, "Do you go at sunrise or at sunset?" "Go whither?" said Arius. "Why, to worship Mentu, or Atmu, of course! Do you not worship?" "Worship whom?" asked Arius. "Oh," she answered, "old Ea, or Ptah, or Hesiri-Hes, or the other gods, any of them you prefer?" "I do not worship any of them," said Arius. "Perhaps, then," said Theckla, "thou art an atheist, and hatest all of the gods; and that is very wrong. For papa says that the atheists are little better than the Christians themselves, and that it is owing to their evil influence that so many young people in Alexandria are growing up to believe in nothing. But, blessed be the gods, I have been brought up in religion!" "And which of the gods dost thou love and worship most?" "I love none of them surely, but I fear and worship Ptah, Ra, and Hesiri-Hes, the cross old things; because mamma says that they are the most respectable; and I fear them much, especially the terrible, implacable, pitiless Ma-t." "But do you not think," said Arius, "that you would rather worship some loving, compassionate, and holy deity, whom you could love, and obey because you loved him?" "Oh, that would be funny, would it not?--for a girl to fall in love with a god! I never thought of such a thing before, but I believe," she added, with an arch glance at Arius, "that I would like a really nice handsome boy better than any of the plebeian gods!" "What dost thou mean, Theckla, by saying ’the plebeian gods’?"