Now the renewal of this assurance stabbed at Argathona's heart, and she knelt at the old man's feet and besought him, asking if there were no way by which her gift of abiding youth and enduring life could be given to a mortal. Boniface answered her that there was no such way, though poets had dreamed of a fountain of youth which blessed those that drank with renewed youth and length of years. But no such fountain existed in the world. Then Argathona began to weep, remembering her mother's sorrow, and seeing its renewal for herself, and for the anguish in her eyes the solitary strove to comfort her. "I cannot give your lover endless life in this world," he said; "but I can give you the life of a mortal, with its grace beyond the grave." When Argathona stared at him wide-eyed in wonder, he told her that if she would embrace the true faith and be baptized a Christian, in that moment her birthright of immortality would depart from her and her gift of endless youth, and she would become a mortal woman with all a woman's cares and sorrows and a woman's certain death. He told her that if she did this her beauty would fade from her year by year, and ugly age would creep upon her, with many aches and pains in its company, till her time came to pass away. Then he painted the joys of paradise, and the fellowship of the saints and angels, and the endless pleasure of the elect. But only by baptism and acceptation of the burden of death could she hope to be happy with her lover, here for a little while, and hereafter forever. Argathona mused a little while nursing her chin in the hollow of her hand, and after musing rose and thanked the anchorite gravely and discreetly for what he had told her, and so bade him farewell. "I will abide for a while in my forest," she said, "and think upon these things that you have told me, and if it prove that my spirit shall see with your eyes, and my heart shall speak with your voice, then I will come to you again." So she rose and went her way up the mountain path into the forest, and the old pope knelt at the feet of the Crucified and prayed. XXVII THE DREAM OF ARGATHONA