And when he asked it, he found himself in no humour to answer it.

He was adrift, and blown out of harbour upon a shoreless sea, in utter darkness; all heaven and earth were nothing to him.

He was alone in the blindness of anger.
Gradually one fixed idea, as a light-tower, began to glimmer through the storm....

To see Hypatia, and convert her.

He had the patriarch's leave for that.