“It was cut down and rooted up,” replied the steward.  “The emperor gave the sanctuary over to Bishop Theophilus and he set to work at once to destroy it.  The temple was pulled down, the sacred vessels went into the melting-pot, and the images were mutilated and insulted before they were thrown into the lime-kiln.  The place they are building now is to be a Christian church.  Oh! to think of the airy, beautiful colonnades that once stood there, and then of the dingy barn that is to take their place!”

“Why do the gods endure it?  Has Zeus lost his thunderbolts?” cried Orpheus clenching his hands, and paying no heed to Agne who sat pale and sternly silent during this conversation.

“Nay, he only sleeps, to wake with awful power,” said the old man.  “See those blocks of marble and ruins under the waves.  Swift work is destruction!  And men lost their wits and looked on at the crime, flinging the delight of the gods into the water and the kiln.  They were wise, very wise; fishes and flames are dumb and cannot cry to heaven.  One barbarian, in one hour can destroy what it has taken the sublimest souls years, centuries, to create.  They glory in destruction and ruin and they can no more build up again such a temple as stood there than they can restore trees that have taken six hundred years to grow.  There—­out there, Herse, in the hollow where those black fellows are stirring mortar—­they have given them shirts too, because they are ashamed of the beauty of men’s bodies—­that is where the grotto was where we found your poor father.”

“The grotto?” repeated his wife, looking at the spot through her tears, and thinking of the day when, as a girl, she had hurried to the feast of Dionysus and sought her father in the temple.  He had been famous as a gem-cutter.  In obedience to the time-honored tradition in Alexandria, after intoxicating himself with new wine in honor of the god, he had rushed out into the street to join the procession.  The next morning he had not returned; the afternoon passed and evening came and still he did not appear, so his daughter had gone in search of him.  Karnis was at that time a young student and, as her father’s lodger, had rented the best room in the house.  He had met her going on her errand and had been very ready to help her in the search; before long they had found the old man in the ivy-grown grotto in the grove of Dionysus—­motionless and cold, as if struck by lightning.  The bystanders believed that the god had snatched him away in his intoxicated legion.

In this hour of sorrow Karnis had proved himself her friend, and a few months after Herse had become his wife and gone with him to Tauromenium in Sicily.

All this rose before her mind, and even Karnis sat gazing dumbly at the waves; for every spot where some decisive change has occurred in our lives has power to revive the past when we see it again after a long absence.  Thus they all sat in silence till Orpheus, touching his father, pointed out the temple of Isis where he had met the fair Gorgo on the previous day.  The old man turned to look at the sanctuary which, as yet, remained intact.