young, and a boy, who lighted the way with a lantern. After that
handful followed a crowd, about two hundred in number; Vinicius, Chilo,
and Croton walked with these people.

"Yes, lord," said Chilo, "thy maiden is under powerful protection. That
is the Great Apostle with her, for see how passing people kneel to him."

People did in fact kneel before him, but Vinicius did not look at them.
He did not lose Lygia from his eyes for a moment; he thought only of
bearing her away and, accustomed as he had been in wars to stratagems of
all sorts, he arranged in his head the whole plan of seizure with
soldierly precision. He felt that the step on which he had decided was
bold, but he knew well that bold attacks give success generally.

The way was long; hence at moments he thought too of the gulf which that
wonderful religion had dug between him and Lygia. Now he understood
everything that had happened in the past, and why it had happened. He
was sufficiently penetrating for that. Lygia he had not known hitherto.
He had seen in her a maiden wonderful beyond others, a maiden toward
whom his feelings were inflamed: he knew now that her religion made her
different from other women, and his hope that feeling, desire, wealth,
luxury, would attract her he knew now to be a vain illusion. Finally he
understood this, which he and Petronius had not understood, that the new
religion ingrafted into the soul something unknown to that world in
which he lived, and that Lygia, even if she loved him, would not
sacrifice any of her Christian truths for his sake, and that, if
pleasure existed for her, it was a pleasure different altogether from
that which he and Petronius and Cæsar's court and all Rome were
pursuing. Every other woman whom he knew might become his mistress, but
that Christian would become only his victim. And when he thought of