Together the pair went down the alley of cypresses leading to the sea. The moon-path of sensitive silver on the waters ran up to the horizon, and waves were breaking against a chalk cliff. At the end of the alley there was a semicircular seat. Above it the huntress Artemis, in short tunic, with crescented hair, quiver on shoulder, and two deer-hounds at her feet, looked down on the two young people.
They sat down together. Arsinoë pointed out the hill of the Acropolis, so distant that the columns of the Parthenon could hardly be distinguished; and took up the thread of conversations started at their former meetings—
"See how beautiful it is!... And you would destroy that, Julian?"
Making no reply, he stared on the ground.
"I have thought much over what you said to me the last time we met, concerning this humility of yours," continued Arsinoë gently. "Was Alexander son of Philip of Macedon humble? And nevertheless is he not great and splendid?"
Julian said nothing.
"And Brutus, Brutus the stabber of Cæsar! Had Brutus turned the left cheek when struck on the right, do you think he would have been more sublime? Or, indeed, perhaps you consider him a criminal, you Galileans? Why can I not help thinking sometimes, Julian, that you are a hypocrite; and that these blackhabiliments are not your body's true raiment?"
She turned brusquely towards his moon-lit face and regarded him steadfastly.
"Arsinoë, what do you want of me?" murmured Julian, whose cheek was very pale.
"I want you to be frankly my foe!" exclaimed the young girl. "You must not pass by like this, without telling me what you are. Sometimes I dream that it would be better if Rome and Athens were utterly ruined! Better burn a corpse than leave it unburied! And all our friends here—grammarians, rhetoricians—poets who write Imperial eulogies—all these are the rotting body of Greece and Rome. In their company one grows afraid, as among the shroudless dead.... Oh, you may triumph, Galileans! Soon corpses and ruins are all that will remain on earth!... And you, Julian.... But no!... It is impossible! I do not believe that you are with them and against Hellas—against me!..."
Julian sprang up before her, pale and mute, longing to burst away. She held him back.
"Tell me that you are my enemy," she said with heart-broken challenge in her voice.
"Arsinoë!... Why——"
"Tell me all!... I must know. Do you not feel how near we are? Or are you indeed afraid to speak?"
"In two days I leave Athens," murmured Julian.
"Why?—Where are you going?"
"The Emperor has recalled me to Court—to die perhaps. I may now be looking at you for the last time."
"Julian, you do not believe in Him?" cried Arsinoë, seeking to read the eyes of the monk.
"Speak lower!"
He rose, and striding round cautiously explored the dusty road silvered by the moon, the bushes, and even the sea, as if afraid to see sudden-rising spies from the Emperor. Reassured, he returned and sat down. Leaning one hand heavily on the marble he brought his lips close to the ear of Arsinoë—so near that she felt his warm breath—muttering rapidly—
"Believe inHim?... Listen, girl! I say to you now what I have never dared to say even to myself. I hate the Galilean!... But I have lied as long as I can remember. Lying has soaked into my soul, or clung to it, as this black vestment clings to my body. You remember the poisoned shirt of Nessus; Hercules snatched it off with pieces of his own flesh and it slew him, all the same. I—I too shall perish wearing this Galilean lie!"
He pronounced each word with painful effort. Arsinoë gazed at him. His face, changed by suffering and hatred, became the face of a stranger.
"Be calm, friend!" she murmured. "Tell me all. I shall understand you better than anyone else."
"I should like to be able to speak, but speech is a power I have lost," sneered Julian. "I have kept silence too long. Do you understand, Arsinoë? It is all over with him who has once fallen into their clutches! These good and humble men deform him to such a degree—teach him so thoroughly to lie and to dissimulate—that it becomes impossible ever to stand erect and manful again!"
The blood rushed to his forehead, swelling the veins, and through clenched teeth he muttered—
"Cowardice! Foul Galilean cowardice! this—to hate your enemy as I hate Constantius, and to pardonhim, to crouch at his feet, cringe like a serpent, to supplicate him in the humble Christian manner: 'A year, grant your weak-witted slave, Julian, another year; and then do with him as it may please you and your counsellors, O well-beloved of God!' What baseness!"
"No, Julian," protested Arsinoë, "you will conquer! Deception is your strength.... Julian, do you remember Æsop's fable, The Ass in the Lion's Skin? In this affair of yours the story is reversed; the lion is in the ass's skin, and the hero in a monkish habit! And how they will shrink affrighted when you suddenly show your talons! What joy and what terror! Tell me, you long for power?"
"Power!" cried Julian, intoxicated at the sound of the word and inhaling with deep breaths the fresh air of night—"power!... oh, only for a year, a few months, a few days! And I would teach them, I would teach all these crawling and venomous creatures what means their Master's word, 'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's'; I swear by the Sun-god they should render to Cæsar what is his!"
He raised his head, his eyes flashing with rage and pride and renewed youth. Arsinoë gazed on him with a smile. But his head soon fell. He sank back on the bench and crossing his arms on his breast in monkish fashion he faltered—
"No, no; why nurse empty dreams? That can never be. I shall perish. Anger will stifle me. Listen; every night after passing the day on my knees in churches, bowed over relics, I go home broken with fatigue; I fling myself on the bed and sob; yes, bite my own flesh, to avoid crying out with pain. Oh, you cannot know yet, Arsinoë, this Galilean horror andinfection in which I have agonised for twenty years without escaping by death. We Christians take a deal of killing,—worms that live on even when cut in pieces! At first I used to seek consolation in the teachings of the diviners and philosophers. It was hopeless. I follow neither the one nor the other. I am wicked and I wish to be wickeder still. To be strong and terrible as the Demon, my only brother.... But why, why can I not forget that there is beauty in the world; why, O cruel one, did you dawn upon my life?"
With a quick spontaneous movement Arsinoë flung her bare arms round Julian's neck, drew him to her so strongly, so closely, that he felt the whole freshness of her body, murmuring—
"And if I did come towards you, O young man, what if it were as a sibyl to prophesy you glory? You alone are alive among the dead! Splendour is yours! What matters it to me that your wings are no swan's wings, but wings of the black and lost, your talons, talons of a bird of prey? My love is for all the revolted, the reprobate, the rejected—you understand me, Julian? I love the proud and solitary eagles better than any stainless swan. Only ... be prouder yet, be wickeder yet! Dare up to the height of your ambition! Lie without shame; better lie than be humiliated. Fear not hate; it is the impetus of your wings. Come, shall we make an alliance? You shall give me power, I will give you beauty. Are you willing, Julian?"
Again through the light folds of her antique peplum, as once in thepalæstra, he saw the breathing image of the huntress Artemis; it seemed that divine body shone through, golden and tender.
His head reeled in the lunar shadow envelopingthem. Those haughty lips laughingly approached his own.
For the last time he mused. "I must tear myself away. She does not love me. She will never love me. Her love is only for power."
But immediately he added to himself, with a faint smile: "Well, let it be so! I consent to be duped!"
The chill of the strange and insatiate kiss of Arsinoë shot to his heart like the chill of death. It seemed as if Artemis herself, in the translucence of the moon, had descended towards him, embraced him, and mocked him, and like a beam of moonlight fled away.
On the following morning Basil of Cæsarea and Gregory of Nazianzen came across Julian in a basilica in Athens. He was kneeling in prayer. The two friends gazed at him, surprised. Never had they seen upon his features such an expression of rapt serenity.
"Brother," murmured Basil to Gregory, "we have sinned; he whom we inwardly accused is a righteous man."
Gregory shook his head.
"May the Lord pardon me if I am deceived," he said slowly, his piercing eye still on Julian. "But remember, Basil, how often the Devil himself, the father of lying, has appeared to men in guise of an angel!"