memory looked back on the admirers who had approached her in Arelas when
she was still little more than a child, and afterwards in Rome, with
tender words and looks, they all appeared like phantom forms carrying
feeble tapers, whose light paled pitifully, for Polykarp had now come on
the scene, bearing the very sun itself in his hands.

"They--and he," she murmured to herself, and she beheld as it were a
balance, and on one of the scales lay the homage which in her vain fancy
she had so coveted. It was of no more weight than chaff, and its whole
mass was like a heap of straw, which flew up as soon as Polykarp laid his
love--a hundredweight of pure gold, in the other scale.

"And if all the nations and kings of the earth brought their treasures
together," thought she, "and laid them at my feet, they could not make me
as rich as he has made me, and if all the stars were fused into one, the
vast globe of light which they would form could not shine so brightly as
the joy that fills my soul. Come now what may, I will never complain
after that hour of delight."

Then she thought over each of her former meetings with Polykarp, and
remembered that he had never spoken to her of love. What must it not
have cost him to control himself thus; and a great triumphant joy filled
her heart at the thought that she was pure, and not unworthy of him, and
an unutterable sense of gratitude rose up in her soul. The love she bore
this man seemed to take wings, and it spread itself over the common life
and aspect of the world, and rose to a spirit of devotion. With a deep
sigh she raised her eyes and hands to heaven, and in her longing to prove
her love to every living being, nay to every created thing, her spirit
sought the mighty and beneficent Power to whom she owed such exalted
happiness.