father even, and my own mother, and every one, every one pointed at her
and condemned her, I would never cease to believe in her purity. It is
you who have brought her to shame; it is you--"

"I kept silence while all condemned her," said Paulus with warmth, "for I
believed that she was guilty, just as you believe that I am, just as
every one that is bound by no ties of love is more ready to believe evil
than good, Now I know, aye, know for certain, that we did the poor woman
an injustice. If the splendor of the lovely dream, that you call Sirona,
has been clouded by my fault--"

"Clouded? And by you?" laughed Polykarp. "Can the toad that plunges
into the sea, cloud its shining blue, can the black bat that flits across
the night, cloud the pure light of the full-moon?"

An emotion of rage again shot through the anchorite's heart, but he was
by this time on his guard against himself, and he only said bitterly, and
with hardly-won composure:

"And how was it then with the flower, and with the bird, that were
destroyed by beasts without understanding? I fancy you meant no absent
third person by that beast, and yet now you declare that it is not within
my power even to throw a shadow over your day-star! You see you
contradict yourself in your anger, and the son of a wise man, who himself
has not long since left the school of rhetoric, should try to avoid that.
You might regard me with less hostility, for I will not offend you; nay,
I will repay your evil words with good--perhaps the very best indeed that
you ever heard in your life. Sirona is a worthy and innocent woman, and
at the time when Phoebicius came out to seek her, I had never even set
eyes upon her nor had my ears ever heard a word pass her lips."