Damia and Porphyrius took a vain pleasure in their eager discussions, and clapped with delight, as though it were a game of skill, when Gorgo laughingly checkmated her excited opponent with some unanswerable argument.

But there came a day when Constantine discovered that his eager defence of that which to him was high and holy, was, to his hearers, no more than a subject of mockery, and henceforth the lad, now fast growing to manhood, kept away from the merchant’s house.  Still, Gorgo could always win him back again, and sometimes, when they were alone together, the old strife would be renewed, and more seriously and bitterly than of old.  But while he loved her, she also loved him, and when he had so far mastered himself as to remain away for any length of time she wore herself out with longing to see him.  They felt that they belonged to each other, but they also felt that an insuperable gulf yawned between them, and that whenever they attempted to clasp hands across the abyss a mysterious and irresistible impulse drove them to open it wider, and to dig it deeper by fresh discussions, till at last Constantine could not endure that she, of all people, should mock at his Holy of Holies and drag it in the dust.

He must go—­he must leave Gorgo, quit Alexandria, cost what it might.  The travellers’ tales that he had heard from the captains of trading-vessels and ships of war who frequented his father’s house had filled him with a love of danger and enterprise, and a desire to see distant lands and foreign peoples.  His father’s business, for which he was intended, did not attract him.  Away—­away—­he would go away; and a happy coincidence opened a path for him.

Porphyrius had taken him one day on some errand to Canopus; the elder man had gone in his chariot, his two sons and Constantine escorting him on horseback.  At the city-gates they met Romanus, the general in command of the Imperial army, with his staff of officers, and he, drawing rein by the great merchant’s carriage, had asked him, pointing to Constantine, whether that were his son.

“No,” replied Porphyrius, “but I wish he were.”  At these words the ship-master’s son colored deeply, while Romanus turned his horse round, laid his hand on the young man’s arm and called out to the commander of the cavalry of Arsinoe:  “A soldier after Ares’ own heart, Columella!  Do not let him slip.”

Before the clouds of dust raised by the officers’ horses as they rode off, had fairly settled, Constantine had made up his mind to be a soldier.  In his parents’ house, however, this decision was seen under various aspects.  His father found little to say against it, for he had three sons and only two shipyards, and the question seemed settled by the fact that Constantine, with his resolute and powerful nature, was cut out to be a soldier.  His pious mother, on the other hand, appealed to the learned works of Clemens and Tertullian, who forbid the faithful Christian to draw the sword; and she related the legend of the holy Maximilianus, who, being compelled, under Diocletian, to join the army, had suffered death at the hands of the executioner rather than shed his fellow-creatures’ blood in battle.  The use of weapons, she added, was incompatible with a godly and Christian life.