“Little do you dream in your seclusion of all the wickedness that seethes like a turbid fountain whose waters cast up mire and dirt in Rome!” Claudius exclaimed. “It may be well that you, in your purity and innocence, should know but little--nay, nothing--of all that lies below the surface--greed, and lust, and murder, all those things which are the signs and token, or, rather, the fruits of the flesh.” “Do not tell me more,” Hyacintha said. “I cannot amend what is wrong. I am content to believe, as those higher and nobler than I am have believed for a thousand years.” “Are you indeed content to believe?” Claudius asked sadly. “I know that if I were to draw a picture of all, that after only a short residence, _I_ see in Rome, you would not be content. The wife and daughter of Diocletian have been foully murdered. Think you not that the blood of the Christian matrons and maidens who fell under the ban of the Emperor did not cry for vengeance, and that the cry was answered by their destruction?” “The innocent suffering for the guilty? Nay,” said Hyacintha, with a light laugh; “if the God whom you worship decrees such judgment, He is not worthy of love.” “And yet,” said Claudius, “and yet in the sufferings of Christ, the pure, the undefiled, for the sinner, rests our safety.” “Nay! not your safety,” exclaimed Hyacintha; “or why did Christ leave so many to perish, torn by wild beasts, stoned, and tortured?” “I am no scholar,” Claudius said. “I am not like Casca, learned in argument and reasoning, but there is in me a witness to the truth of what I say. The innocent suffered for the guilty, and there is salvation in that suffering for all who believe; and I _know_ in whom I believe!” Hyacintha was silent. Claudius had always seemed to her in her childish days a brave and athletic youth, when feats of arms and success in the games had so often brought her father’s angry and contemptuous taunts on the head of her brother Casca. Many a time had she heard him declare that Claudius ought to have been his son, and that the weakly Casca was scarcely better than a girl. Hyacintha had often shrunk from Claudius’s roughness, his boisterous laugh, his loud ringing voice as he rallied Casca on his depression. Now she could but tell herself there was a change. The face, bronzed by exposure, and scarred in two places by a sword-cut, was benign and gentle in its expression. The voice that came from under that mass of reddish hair was subdued and even musical. Claudius was changed--what had brought about that change? She was, I think, unconscious that as she stood there--the most winning and beautiful picture of womanhood--that she filled Claudius’s strong and noble heart with longing to possess her--to take her from this false faith, to bring her to the foot of the Cross, that she might live in the true light that lighteth every man.