Some secret sympathy touched my heart....

Alas! poor child! But how came you to know her ?' 'All Alexandria knows the shameless abomination,' interrupted a voice at their elbow--none other than that of the little porter, who had been dodging and watching the pair the whole way, and could no longer restrain his longing to meddle.

'And well it had been for many a rich young man had odd Miriam never brought her over, in an evil day, from Athens hither.' 'Miriam ?' 'Yes, monk; a name not unknown, I am told, in palaces as well as in slave-markets.' 'An evil-eyed old Jewess ?' 'A Jewess she is, as her name might have informed you; and as for her eyes, I consider them, or used to do so, of course--for her injured nation have been long expelled from Alexandria by your fanatic tribe--as altogether divine and demoniac, let the base imagination of monks call them what it likes.' 'But how did you know this Pelagia, my son?
She is no fit company for such as you.' Philammon told, honestly enough, the story of his Nile journey, and Pelagia's invitation to him.
'You did not surely accept it ?' 'Heaven forbid that Hypatia's scholar should so degrade himself!' Arsenius shook his head sadly.
'You would not have had me go ?' 'No, boy.

But how long hast thou learned to call thyself Hypatia's scholar, or to call it a degradation to visit the most sinful, if thou mightest thereby bring back a lost lamb to the Good Shepherd?
Nevertheless, thou art too young for such employment--and she meant to tempt thee doubtless.' 'I do not think it.

She seemed struck by my talking Athenian Greek, and having come from Athens.' 'And how long since she came from Athens ?' said Arsenius, after a pause.
'Who knows ?' 'Just after it was sacked by the barbarians,' said the little porter, who, beginning to suspect a mystery, was peaking and peering like an excited parrot.