Simoetha has learnt many spells and charms from an Assyrian, and she tries them all.

The distant roar of the waves, the stroke rising from the fire, the dogs howling in the street, the tortured fluttering bird, the old woman, the broken-hearted girl and her awful spells, all join in forming a night scene the effect of which is heightened by the calm cold moonshine.
The old woman leaves the girl, who at once ceases to weave her spells, allows her pent-up tears to have their way, and looking up to Selene the moon, the lovers' silent confidante, pours out her whole story: how when she first saw the beautiful Delphis her heart had glowed with love, she had seen nothing more of the train of youths who followed him, "and," (thus sadly the poet makes her speak) "how I gained my home I knew not; some strange fever wasted me.
Ten days and nights I lay upon my bed.
O tell me, mistress Moon, whence came my love!" "Then" (she continues) when Delphis at last crossed her threshold: "I Became all cold like snow, and from my brow Brake the damp dewdrops: utterance I had none, Not e'en such utterance as a babe may make That babbles to its mother in its dreams; But all my fair frame stiffened into wax,-- O tell me mistress Moon, whence came my love!" Whence came her love?
thence, whence it comes to us now.

The love of the creature to its Creator, of man to God, is the grand and yet gracious gift of Christianity.

Christ's command to love our neighbor called into existence not only the conception of philanthropy, but of humanity itself, an idea unknown to the heathen world, where love had been at widest limited to their native town and country.

The love of man and wife has without doubt been purified and transfigured by Christianity; still it is possible that a Greek may have loved as tenderly and longingly as a Christian.