"Yes; it is not the thinking of them that is strange, but what do they mean to you? What does our law mean to you? What does our mystery mean to you? Nothing. You are given over to vain imaginations, the conceits of the mind. You have no humility, no faith. Your great possessions have turned your mind. Until the blow fell upon you, you had imagined that you were secure through life. You have put your trust in perishable things, and they have fallen through your fingers like water, like dry sand. What have you left sacred in the world? Your wisdom has made a desert about you, a desert where there is no God. What have you to hope?" It was as if he mocked me, pitied me, understood me. He made me cold toward him; and at the same time my sorrow flooded me. "What is my trouble to you? I can bear it alone," I said harshly. "The things which you have written I have read in our own philosophers." "You have found nothing else in me which was not in them?" "Nothing." A gloom spread over his face, the light which had illuminated it died out, leaving only the smouldering fires of his eyes, which burned dimly. He dropped my hands. The others turned away their eyes and shifted uneasily. "There is he in whose name I speak. The love of Christ constrained me." I sat frowning, without comprehension. "It is not yet time," he continued sadly. "One must have patience, exceeding patience. You do not understand what we teach concerning Christ, who is the Son of God. Yet you came to us willingly; you, a Roman, came and took the hand of a Jew, whose touch, to your fellows, is contamination; and, in my pride I said: Lo! I have triumphed over the wisdom of the Gentile. It is through God's grace only that I am called to be an apostle to men. It is through his grace alone that you will be saved; for you will come again. Tell me that you will come again." "I shall come again," I said simply; the curious anxiety of his words troubled me vaguely. I felt a profound pity for this man, to whom even a stranger was a brother. I rose and took my cloak; as I passed out each gave me a salutation, the salutation of peace. Outside it was dawn. The lupanars were giving up their dead, some sailors and devotees of the great goddess were already congregating in the wine-shops. Muffled as I was in my great coarse cloak they suspected me of being one of the Roman soldiers, and none spoke to me or offered me insult. I did not heed them but passed along the quays, looking at Acrocorinth towering like Eryx, that other home of the sea-born and lure for sailors, into the infinite blue of a cloudless sky. Wreaths of vapour cloaked its lower reaches, and it seemed like a great dome suspended in the air. On the other side laughed the wide sea in multitudinous ripples of light. It all seemed to reflect some childish half-conscious gaiety of my soul. My sorrow still lay there, but comforted with human sympathy, and the two mystical gifts of the Christians, peace and love.