hence--; and yet no: stay and sneer if you will.
It is but a little time--a few days longer in this prison-house of our degradation, and each thing shall return to its own fountain; the blood-drop to the abysmal heart, and the water to the river, and the river to the shining sea; and the dew-drop which fell from heaven shall rise to heaven again, shaking off the dust-grains which weighed it down, thawed from the earth-frost which chained it here to herb and sward, upward and upward ever through stars and suns, through gods, and through the parents of the gods, purer and purer through successive lives, till it enters The Nothing, which is The All, and finds its home at last.'....
And the speaker stopped suddenly, her eyes glistening with tears, her whole figure trembling and dilating with rapture.

She remained for a moment motionless, gazing earnestly at her audience, as if in hopes of exciting in them some kindred glow; and then recovering herself, added in a more tender tone, not quite unmixed with sadness-- 'Go now, my pupils.

Hypatia has no more for you to-day.

Go now, and spare her at least--woman as she is after all--the shame of finding that she has given you too much, and lifted the veil of Isis before eyes which are not enough purified to behold the glory of the goddess .-- Farewell!' She ended: and Philammon, the moment that the spell of her voice was taken off him, sprang up, and hurried out through the corridor into the street....
So beautiful! So calm and merciful to him So enthusiastic towards all which was noble! Had not she too spoken of the unseen world, of the hope of immortality, of the conquest of the spirit over the flesh, just as a Christian might have done?
Was the gulf between them so infinite?
If so, why had her aspirations awakened echoes in his own heart--echoes too, just such as the prayers and lessons of the Laura used to awaken?
If the fruit was so like, must not the root be like also ?....

Could that be a counterfeit?
That a minister of Satan in the robes of an angel of light?
Light, at least, it was purity, simplicity, courage, earnestness, tenderness, flashed out from eye, lip, gesture....