The great central points of their teaching meant nothing to me. The promise for me was void; but the conditions of the promise, there was the charm. Sometimes I think that if I could have put away from me all my philosophical preoccupations, I would willingly have left everything I possessed, for the sake of that peace, that security, that trust in something outside ourselves, which is infinitely wise, infinitely merciful, infinitely loving. But faith, belief, is not an act of volition, it is the spiritual nature; it is the possession of children and of simple folk. To those who have looked into the nature of things, who with Epicurus see man as only the momentary grouping together of a substance essentially transient and mutable, life itself is the end, a life of fine appreciations, retirement, and leisure, and a death that has no awakening. We, too, love our neighbour; we, too, have charity toward the bruised and broken lives about us; we, too, recommend all men to hide their lives, to be moderate, to abhor that which is evil and cling to that which is good. We are Christians without Christ. My own grief was still with me, but a serene and hopeless resignation had taken the place of despair. The memory of Drusilla and my child haunted my waking moments, and daily thoughts, like vain phantoms escaped for a brief moment from the shadowy realm of fabled Proserpina. The past was part of my consciousness; as it is, I suppose of every man. I began again to frequent the Prefect's palace, to listen to his mellow wisdom which he cloaked in laughing phrase, as we passed easily from one subject to another without exhausting any. Seneca's raillery was dull beside his brother's; Seneca laughed at women and the comedy of manners, to Gallio nothing was sacred, not even his philosophic brother. At the same time I still continued to frequent the house of Caius, and the society of the Christians. It placed me in an anomalous position, and one day Gallio said laughingly that a friend had accused me of assisting at the secret rites and orgies of the Christians, but that he had replied I was more likely to frequent the pretty daughter of Caius. Then I remembered the daughter of Caius, a young girl of extraordinary beauty, with a perverse expression, blonde hair, and eyes like a cat, that watched every movement with a stealthy curiosity. She seemed lonely and out of place in that house of austere gravity. "She is already famous as a beauty," said Gallio. "I go there on business," I said with a smile, and willing to let him believe what he would; and, I added, after a moment's thought: "she is charming." Gallio laughed, and then changed his tone quickly.