In her youth her father had kept her very strictly, but still he had
allowed her to go through the streets of the town with her young
companions, wreathed with flowers, and all dressed in their best, in the
procession of maidens at the feast of Venus of Arelas, to whom all the
women of her native town were wont to turn with prayers and sacrifices
when their hearts were touched by love.

Now she tried to pray to Venus, but again and again the wanton jests of
the men who were used to accompany the maidens came into her mind, and
memories of how she herself had eagerly listened for the only too
frequent cries of admiration, and had enticed the silent with a glance,
or thanked the more clamorous with a smile. To-day certainly she had no
mind for such sport, and she recollected the stern words which had fallen
from Dorothea's lips on the worship of Venus, when she had once told her
how well the natives of Arelas knew how to keep their feasts.

And Polykarp, whose heart was nevertheless so full of love, he no doubt
thought like his mother, and she pictured him as she had frequently seen
him following his parents by the side of his sister Marthana--often hand
in hand with her--as they went to church. The senator's son had always
had a kindly glance for her, excepting when he was one of this procession
to the temple of the God of whom they said that He was love itself, and
whose votaries indeed were not poor in love; for in Petrus' house, if
anywhere, all hearts were united by a tender affection. It then occurred
to her that Paulus had just now advised her to turn to the crucified God
of the Christians, who was full of an equal and divine love to all men.
To him Polykarp also prayed--was praying perhaps this very hour; and if
she now did the same her prayers would ascend together with his, and so
she might be in some sort one with that beloved friend, from whom