After the manner of women, she crowned him, in her own imagination, with all powers and excellences which she would have wished him to possess, as well as with those which he actually manifested, till Philammon would have been as much astonished as self-glorified could he have seen the idealised caricature of himself which the sweet enthusiast had painted for her private enjoyment.

They were blissful months those to poor Hypatia.

Orestes, for some reason or other, had neglected to urge his suit, and the Iphigenia-sacrifice had retired mercifully into the background.

Perhaps she should be able now to accomplish all without it.

And yet--it was so long to wait! Years might pass before Philammon's education was matured, and with them golden opportunities which might never recur again.
'Ah!' she sighed at times, 'that Julian had lived a generation later! That I could have brought all my hard-earned treasures to the feet of the Poet of the Sun, and cried, "Take me!--Hero, warrior, statesman, sage, priest of the God of Light! Take thy slave! Command her--send her--to martyrdom, if thou wilt!" A pretty price would that have been wherewith to buy the honour of being the meanest of thy apostles, the fellow-labourer of Iamblichus, Maximus, Libanius, and the choir of sages who upheld the throne of the last true Caesar!'.