Demetrius, prudent and conservative persons, gathered around Hermas
and made him welcome to their circle. Chief among them was Libanius,
the sophist, his nearest neighbour, whose daughter Athenais had been
the playmate of Hermas in the old days.

He had left her a child. He found her a beautiful woman. What
transformation is so magical, so charming, as this? To see the
uncertain lines of-youth rounded into firmness and symmetry, to
discover the half-ripe, merry, changing face of the girl matured
into perfect loveliness, and looking at you with calm, clear,
serious eyes, not forgetting the past, but fully conscious of the
changed present--this is to behold a miracle in the flesh.

"Where have you been, these two years?" said Athenais, as they
walked together through the garden of lilies where they had so often
played.

"In a land of tiresome dreams," answered Hermas; "but you have
wakened me, and I am never going back again."

It was not to be supposed that the sudden disappearance of Hermas
from among his former associates could long remain unnoticed. At
first it was a mystery. There was a fear, for two or three days,
that he might be lost. Some of his more intimate companions
maintained that his devotion had led him out into the desert to join
the anchorites. But the news of his return to the House of the
Golden Pillars, and of his new life as its master, filtered quickly
through the gossip of the city.

Then the church was filled with dismay and grief and reproach.