“If, on the other hand,” continued Cæcilius, not noticing her interruption, “if all your thoughts go one way; if you have needs, desires, aims, aspirations, all of which demand an Object, and imply, by their very existence, that such an Object does exist also; and if nothing here does satisfy them, and if there be a message which professes to come from that Object, of whom you already have the presentiment, and to teach you about Him, and to bring the remedy you crave; and if those who try that remedy say with one voice that the remedy answers; are you not bound, Callista, at least to look that way, to inquire into what you hear about it, and to ask for His help, if He be, to enable you to believe in Him?”

“This is what a slave of mine used to say,” cried Callista, abruptly; “… and another, Agellius, hinted the same thing…. What is your remedy, what your Object, what your love, O Christian teacher? Why are you all so mysterious, so reserved in your communications?”

Cæcilius was silent for a moment, and seemed at a loss for an answer. At length he said, “Every man is in that state which you confess of yourself. We have no love for Him who alone lasts. We love those things which do not last, but come to an end. Things being thus, He whom we ought to love has determined to win us back to Him. With this object He has come into His own world, in the form of one of us men. And in that human form He opens His arms and woos us to return to Him, our Maker. This is our Worship, this is our Love, Callista.”

“You talk as Chione,” Callista answered; “only that she felt, and you teach. She could not speak of her Master without blushing for joy…. And Agellius, when he said one word about his Master, he too began to blush….”

It was plain that the priest could hardly command his feelings, and they sat for a short while in silence. Then Callista began, as if musing on what she had heard.

“A loved One,” she said, “yet ideal; a passion so potent, so fresh, so innocent, so absorbing, so expulsive of other loves, so enduring, yet of One never beheld;—mysterious! It is our own notion of the First and only Fair, yet embodied in a substance, yet dissolving again into a sort of imagination…. It is beyond me.”