All this seemed to Dada perfectly delightful, and she was on the point of giving her hand to Medius in token of agreement, when her eye caught the anxious gaze of the young Christian girl who stood before her with a deep flush on her face.  Agne seemed to be blushing for her.  The color rushed to her own cheeks, and shortly saying:  “No—­after all, I think not,” she turned her back on the old man and threw herself on the cushions close to where the wine-jug was standing.  Medius now began to besiege Karnis and Herse with arguments, but they refused all his offers as they intended quitting Alexandria in a few days, so he had no alternative but to submit.  Still, he did not altogether throw up the game, and to win Dada’s consent, at any rate, he made her laugh with a variety of comical pranks and showed her some ingenious conjuring tricks, and ere long their floating home echoed with merriment, with the clinking of wine-cups and with songs, in which even Agne was obliged to take part.  Medius did not leave till near midnight and Herse then sent them all to bed.

As soon as the slave had undressed her young mistress and left the girls alone, Dada threw herself into the arms of Agne who was on the point of getting into bed, and kissed her vehemently, exclaiming:  “You are much—­so much better than I!  How is that you always know what is right?”

Then she lay down; but before she fell asleep she once more spoke to Agne:  “Marcus will find us out, I am certain,” she said, “and I should really like to know what he has to say to me.”

In a few minutes sleep had sealed her eyes, but the Christian girl lay awake; her thoughts would not rest, and Sleep, who the night before had taken her to his heart, to-night would not come near her pillow; so much to agitate and disturb her soul had taken place during the day.

She had often before now been a silent spectator of the wild rejoicings of the musician’s family, and she had always thought of these light-hearted creatures as spendthrifts who waste all their substance in a few days to linger afterwards through years of privation and repentance.  Troubled, as she could not fail to be, as to the eternal salvation of these lost souls, though happy in her own faith, she had constantly turned for peace to her Saviour and always found it; but to-night it was not so, for a new and unexpected temptation had sprung up for her in the house of Porphyrius.

She had heard Gorgo sing again, and joined her own voice with hers.  Dirges, yearning hymns, passionate outpourings in praise of the mighty and beautiful divinity had filled her ear and stirred her soul with an ecstatic thrill, although she knew that they, were the composition of heathen poets and had first been sung to the harmony of lutes by reprobate idolaters.  And yet, and yet they had touched her heart, and moved her soul to rapture, and filled her eyes with tears.