Both are beyond convention; both have a touch of impulsive passion, of natural wildness, of flower-beauty.

Both are, in hours of crisis, borne beyond themselves, and mistress of the hour.

Both mould men, for their good, like wax in their fingers.

But Pompilia is the white rose, touched with faint and innocent colour; and Balaustion is the wild pomegranate flower, burning in a crimson of love among the dark green leaves of steady and sure thought, her powers latent till needed, but when called on and brought to light, flaming with decision and revelation.
In this book we see her in her youth, her powers as yet untouched by heavy sorrow.

In the next, in _Aristophanes' Apology_, we first find her in matured strength, almost mastering Aristophanes; and afterwards in the depth of grief, as she flies with her husband over the seas to Rhodes, leaving behind her Athens, the city of her heart, ruined and enslaved.