A CHRISTMAS LOSS





HERMAS found the Grove of Daphne quite deserted. There was no sound
in the enchanted vale but the rustling of the light winds chasing
each other through the laurel thickets, and the babble of
innumerable streams. Memories of the days and nights of delicate
pleasure that the grove had often seen still haunted the bewildered
paths and broken fountains. At the foot of a rocky eminence, crowned
with the ruins of Apollo's temple, which had been mysteriously
destroyed by fire just after Julian had restored and reconsecrated
it, Hermas sat down beside a gushing spring, and gave himself up to
sadness.

"How beautiful the world would be, how joyful, how easy to live in,
without religion. These questions about unseen things, perhaps about
unreal things, these restraints and duties and sacrifices--if I
were only free from them all, and could only forget them all, then I
could live my life as I pleased, and be happy."

"Why not?" said a quiet voice at his back.

He turned, and saw an old man with a long beard and a threadbare
cloak (the garb affected by the pagan philosophers) standing behind
him and smiling curiously.