CHAPTER XIV: THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS.
THESE four months had been busy and eventful enough to Hypatia and to Philammon; yet the events and the business were of so gradual and uniform a tenor, that it is as well to pass quickly over them, and show what had happened principally by its effects.
The robust and fiery desert-lad was now metamorphosed into the pale and thoughtful student, oppressed with the weight of careful thought and weary memory.

But those remembrances were all recent ones.

With his entrance into Hypatia's lecture-room, and into the fairy realms of Greek thought, a new life had begun for him; and the Laura, and Pambo, and Arsenius, seemed dim phantoms from some antenatal existence, which faded day by day before the inrush of new and startling knowledge.
But though the friends and scenes of his childhood had fallen back so swiftly into the far horizon, he was not lonely.

His heart found a lovelier, if not a healthier home, than it had ever known before.

For during those four peaceful and busy months of study there had sprung up between Hypatia and the beautiful boy one of those pure and yet passionate friendships--call them rather, with St.Augustine, by the sacred name of love--which, fair and holy as they are when they link youth to youth, or girl to girl, reach their full perfection only between man and woman.