What was it that seemed to you so particularly tempting in all that whirl ?" Hermas hesitated.

He feared to speak, and yet something urged and drove him to say out all that was stirring his soul.

If any one of all those grave men who despised the world and among whom he had grown up, could ever understand him, he knew well that it would be Paulus; Paulus whose rough beard he had pulled when he was little, on whose shoulders he had often sat, and who had proved to him a thousand times how truly he loved him.

It is true the Alexandrian was the severest of them all, but he was harsh only to himself.

Hermas must once for all unburden his heart, and with sudden decision he asked the anchorite: "Did you often visit the baths ?" "Often?
I only wonder that I did not melt away and fall to pieces in the warm water like a wheaten loaf." "Why do you laugh at that which makes men beautiful ?" cried Hermas hastily.