“Once, on the Cælian Hill, on the very morning of my full consecration, I learned that it was sweet to be loved. My woman’s heart told me that this was the woman’s highest heritage--to be the beloved of a brave, good man. In a vision, as with a lightning flash, I seemed to see a fair landscape stretched out before me, where there was the song of rejoicing and the happiness which comes of a mutual love. Then a cloud swept over it, blotting it from my sight, and I was on a mountain top, so high above others--a Vestal Virgin, devoted to the service of the goddess; high above others--yes, high--but how cold! how lonely! Rumours of the wickedness of the city reached me--foul deeds, which made me blush for the women who took part in them. Emperors and great ones fell; Christians were not exempt from the love of change; there were dissensions amongst them; there were envies, and hatreds, and heartburnings amongst their leaders. “The Jew hated and cursed the Christian, and yet they both believed in the true God. Was it not better to be safe in these walls, guarded from danger, than to go forth into the city, whose cry, under the name of pleasure, was often a bitter cry, than to confess Christ, and leave the shadow of the cloisters, the safety of the Temple? If I confessed Christ, I reasoned, and came forth, how would the finger of scorn have been pointed at me? how would the unworthiest of motives have been laid at my door? And then, the cruel death had I been recaptured, the death which is the slowest of all deaths to die. I might have escaped, for a word was enough to him of whom I speak, but the motive was mixed, and of the earth: and I trampled down the longing and went on my way. Dost thou remember how, when a little child, they brought thee weeping to Terentia? I held out my arms to thee, and thou didst nestle in them. Ah! dear one, do not weep. Thy love has been my solace many a time.” For Hermione had flung herself on her knees by Hyacintha’s couch, and was weeping wildly and passionately. She soothed her as a mother soothes a child, and then she said, with a weary sigh:-- “It has been a long fight, and a bitter struggle, but it is over now, and the Lord Jesus has shown me Himself, the Crucified One on the Cross, and that by the Cross alone we may win our Crown. I have committed to my memory, which has ever been a good one, large portions of the Gospels in the soft Greek tongue, and the words have been as honey and the honey-comb. The good father Eusebius baptised me yestere’en in the name of the Lord, and nothing now remains but to commit my soul to Him who died for me, and for thee, also, sweet Hermione, and for the whole world.” She was silent for a time, and Hermione thought she slept, but presently she said:--