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Serapis — Volume 05 by Georg Ebers
page 40 of 62 (64%)
Apuleius drew himself up. "Are you then a Christian?" he asked swiftly
and sternly.

But Gorgo could not reply; she colored deeply and Apuleius vehemently
repeated his question: "Then you really are a Christian?"

She looked frankly in his face: "No," she said, "I am not; but I wish I
were."

The physician turned away with a shrug; but Gorgo drew a breath of
relief, feeling that her avowal had lifted a heavy burthen from her soul.
She hardly knew how the bold and momentous confession had got itself
spoken, but she felt that it was the only veracious answer to the
physician's question.

They spoke no more; she was better pleased to remain silent, for her own
utterance had opened out to her a new land of promise--of feeling and of
thought.

Her lover henceforth was no longer her enemy; and as the tumult of the
struggle by the breach fell on her ear, she could think with joy of his
victorious arms. She felt that this was the purer, the nobler, the
better cause; and she rejoiced in the love of which he had spoken as the
support and the stay of their future life together--as sheltering them
like a tower of strength and a mighty refuge. Compared with that love
all that she had hitherto held dear or indispensable as gracing life, now
seemed vain and worthless; and as she looked at her father's still face,
and remembered how he had lived and what he had suffered, she applied
those words of Paul which Constantine had spoken at their meeting after
his return, to him, too; and her heart overflowed with affection towards
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