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444 DAKKNESS AND DAWN
stage he had rapidly surpassed all competitors, with the exception
of Paris, who shared with him the position of a
favourite of the Koman people. The large sums of money
which he amassed by his art enabled him to purchase his
freedom before he was twenty-three ; and, in a career of unchecked
outward prosperity he had become a familiar inmate
of the noblest patrician houses, and even of the imperial circle.
For some years he had been the favourite of all the gilded
youth, the darling of the Roman ladies. But the faith of his
childhood still
hung about him. Amid the giddiest whirl of
vice and pleasure, he still felt in his heart an aching void ;
and
the events of this evening had revealed to him not only how
aching the void was, but also the misery and failure in which
his life would end, with no vista beyond
it save the darkness
of the grave. Often before, in his lonelier moments, he had
seen virtue and pined for its loss ;
but now that pure ideal
shone before him with a more heavenly lustre, and remorse
pierced him like a sword.
He awaited the next gathering of the Christians with feverish
impatience not with his first purpose of accumulating
evidence for their extirpation, but rather for the sake of his
own soul and that he might leave no stone unturned to save
them. He was also deeply anxious to see him whom Cletus
had described as ' John the beloved.' He longed to hear more
of the Master whom the Christians worshipped with such
passionate devotion, and to know wherein lay the secrets of
the hope which He had kindled, of the peace which He had
bequeathed, of the righteousness which He had placed within
reach of attainment, not only by the noble and the learned,
but by the despised and by paupers and by slaves.
It was to him a time of anxiety and trial. He had to act
that week one of his favourite, most exciting, and most unworthy
parts.
He was pledged to it ; myriads were expecting
to see him in it ;
he had already received for it a large sum of
money from Varro, the president of the games, and he had
neither the courage to withdraw from it nor any appreciable
excuse for doing
so. He acted it with all his accustomed
supremacy of skill, but he acted it
mechanically and with a
wounded conscience; and he listened to the thunders of applause
which his grace evoked with loathing for himself and
for his degraded audience. He returned to his house physi-