loss of her father and the separation from her brothers and sisters was
past. She was little disposed to sacrifice her young love and all her
earthly happiness for spiritual advantages of which she scarcely
comprehended the value. Her father had always spoken of the Christians
with hatred and contempt. She now saw that they could be kind and
helpful, and the doctrine that there was a loving God in Heaven who cared
for all men as his children appealed to her soul; but that we ought to
forgive our enemies, to remember our sins, and to repent of them, and to
regard all the pleasure and amusement which the gay city of Alexandria
could offer as base and worthless--this was absurd and foolish.

And what great sins had she committed? Could a loving God require of her
that she should mar all her best days because as a child she had pilfered
a cake or broken a pitcher; or, as she grew older had sometimes been
obstinate or disobedient? Surely not. And then was an artist, a kind
faithful soul like her tall Pollux, to be odious in the eyes of God the
Father of all, because he was able to make such wonderful things as that
head of her mother, for instance? If this really was so she would
rather, a thousand times rather, lift her hands in prayer to the smiling
Aphrodite, roguish Eros, beautiful Apollo, and all the nine Muses who
protected her Pollux, than to Him.

An obscure aversion rose up in her soul against the stern woman who could
not understand her, and of whose teaching and admonitions she scarcely
took in half; and she rejected many a word of the widow's which might
otherwise easily have found room in her heart, only because it was spoken
by the cold-mannered woman who at every hour seemed to try to lay some
fresh restraint upon her.

Paulina had never yet taken her with her to of the Christian assemblies