Agatha, the temple mother, was very understanding but also very sorrowful. "We are truly sad to lose Andromeda. She has been a good servant to the temple. She has brought in many sestertii to our cause. Although she has not blessed the temple with her own children, she has blessed it with her love. I was very unhappy when she told me that she would be leaving. I shall pray to Aphrodite for her soul."

Diana nodded. "I have been masturbating in front of the statue of the Great Goddess for over an hour, asking that she should be saved."

Agatha smiled understandingly. She was an old woman, a grandmother, perhaps nearly fifty years old, her skin tight and crinkled, her naked breasts now drooping rather than full and firm. But Diana loved her, as it was her duty to love those sisters who had served the goddess Aphrodite for more than a generation. She knelt down in front of Agatha and demonstrated her love by licking, sucking and chewing the lips and clitoris and folds of her vagina. An old woman's vagina was slack, and the hair was coarse, and may no longer offer proof of fecundity once in the lunar cycle, but this vagina belonged to the temple mother and for that reason Diana sincerely loved it. She hoped that one day she might become the temple mother, and then she too could receive the tongue and lips of the sisters when they came to speak with her.

When Agatha was satisfied by Diana's tongue, she bade her go, but advised her that she would almost certainly be unsuccessful in her hope that she may be able to save Andromeda's soul. "These Christians. They are a persistent lot. They love to make martyrs of themselves so as to gain sympathy. They practise the strangest rituals where they pretend to eat human flesh and drink human blood. They have initiation ceremonies where they pretend to drown each other. But despite their strangeness and their denial of the Olympian gods, their faith continues to grow. I fear that one day they may even threaten the temples of the true gods."

"Surely, that cannot be! Zeus would strike them dead with bolts of divine thunder. Heracles would return from Olympus to kill the pagans with his lion's jaw."

Agatha sighed. "I hope you are right. I do so hope you are right. But not all is well in the empire. Even the Romans may choose to abandon their spiritual traditions. I fear that these Christians are as much a threat to the empire's future as the Huns, Goths and Vandals that amass at the empire's borders."

The streets and avenues leading to Andromeda's new home were dark and unfamiliar. It had been a long time since Diana had last ventured so far from the temple. She strode in the centre of the road, dodging the donkeys and oxen-carts that carried out the commerce of the city of Smyrna, seeing the men who stood by the taverns and stalls not as potential customers, but as possible threats. She was glad that the gown she wore hid her breasts and crotch so well. She didn't wish to attract a man's attention unless he was to pay for it. And the only right and proper place for that was in the temple.

And when, at last, Diana was outside the hovel that Andromeda had described as hers, she was shocked. It was just a single room whose door was no more than a woollen blanket. And around her were many idle men, but also women, who, Diana could see from their painted faces and bare breasts, were the common sort of whore that she abhorred. But it was one of these sluts she had to ask which one of the rundown clay and wattle buildings housed Andromeda.

"Oh the new girl? The posh one from the temple. The cunt who's taking my custom. I hope you're taking her back with you. We don't want her here."

Diana smiled as politely as she could at the woman. She must be almost forty. No wonder she had to wear such thick paint over her face. And her breasts were cracked and leathery after years of exposure to the sun. But surely she wasn't suggesting that her beloved Andromeda had become a common whore herself. How obscene! But Diana's abhorrence wasn't any lessened when she entered the room that the whore had indicated, and saw her lover. But not by herself. She was stretched out on the straw mattress while a squat balding man plied away at her, his cock deep within her anus.

Diana gasped. She had often seen Andromeda with men. It was normal for temple prostitutes to see each other in such company. Often she and Andromeda had served the wealthier clients of more adventurous habits as a couple, taking joy from making love to each other as well as taking joint responsibility for their client's passion. But to see Andromeda serving a client outside the temple, and, what's worse, permitting her unclean orifice to be taken as a channel of love... This was surely too much!

Andromeda grinned at Diana as she came in, with that old friendly smile of hers that the girls had exchanged over the years, while not breaking at all into her gasps and moans as she urgently pushed her buttocks up and down on the bald man's cock. He also noticed Diana standing there, but judging that she had not come to also satisfy his lust, he only nodded at her, and then returned to his thrusting.

At least Andromeda wasn't wearing any clothes, Diana reflected. Although, seeing as she wasn't in the temple and was now a common prostitute, was that now a good thing or a bad thing? And Diana was fascinated to see how relatively large Andromeda's anus was. She'd never thought that it could so easily accommodate such a big fat thing as a cock. After all, it was not Aphrodite who had blessed women with an anus. If that were so then it would not have been a feature shared by men. And when the bald man withdrew his fat thick penis, a trail of creamy viscous sperm trailing from its glans to the orifice it had been pounding so vigorously, Diana was fascinated to see how the anus had become so wide and round, with a trail of semen drooping down to tangle in the hairs of her vagina. Diana guessed from the ease by which Andromeda had admitted the organ that she may have been tempted by the pleadings of some of the temple clients to permit them a license not normally sanctioned within a sacred temple.

Andromeda's client soon left, leaving her with a handful of coins on the faces of which was the clear head of the emperor. Diana eased off her dress as soon as she was sure that he had gone, and leaned down lengthways besides her lover. Andromeda kissed her tenderly on the lips and didn't seem at all put out that Diana didn't immediately commence making love with her. When they lived together in the temple, they would normally have already slumped into the slippery, sweaty heap of passion, so great had been their mutual love. Instead now, Diana was content to lay on her back with one arm around Andromeda's bare back, while her lover leaned over her and stroked her nipples.

"I can't lie, Andromeda. I came here in the hope of persuading you to return to the true faith. But now I've seen the horrors to which you have allowed yourself to descend, I'm not sure that you may not already beyond saving. You have not only become a Christian, which defies the natural order, you have also become a common whore. Is this how it is in your new religion? Do women who serve Christ also sell themselves in such a demeaning way? Proffering their arses to any pervert who wishes to take them?"

Diana laughed. "Don't confuse my profession with the religion I profess. I had no choice when I left the temple but to become a whore. But one who works for herself. Not for the upkeep of a huge marble temple. But my faith is a separate issue. I left the temple not because I no longer wished to make a living by having sex with strangers, but because I truly believe in Jesus Christ."

"So you work for yourself, now? You have sex for money? Not as a service to the great goddess Aphrodite?"

"I always did have sex for money, Diana. How else could I have afforded to leave the temple? Don't say you don't also make money by offering satisfaction to the clients outside of the normal remit?"

"Like anal sex? No. Never."

Andromeda laughed. "You're such a prude, Diana! You really do believe in Aphrodite!"

"Of course. As so did you. Until recently."

"I'm not sure that's true. I don't think I really believed in anything before now. But Jesus Christ is a god who forgives and condones. He feasts with prostitutes and moneylenders. One of his disciples, Mary Magdalene, it is said, was a common prostitute. But there are so many different stories of Jesus Christ. Some people say that He believes in chastity and virginity. That He Himself was a virgin until He died. I can't believe that! He was a man, so He must have had sex. Someone should gather all these different stories together in one book so that people can agree on who is the real Jesus Christ. And what He taught."

"So what did he teach? I heard he was some kind of doctor or something."

"He performed miracles. He turned water into wine. He fed a multitude on a single fish. He brought people back from the dead. And He even came back from the dead Himself."

"That's nothing! The gods performed much greater miracles than that. Zeus throws thunderbolts. Apollo carries the Sun on a chariot. Athena brought wisdom to the world. Aphrodite brings love, the greatest of all virtues."

"But, Diana, I don't believe that stuff. It just seems like myth. Fairy Tales. Legends. Where are the centaurs, fauns and dryads of your faith? The Roman Empire stretches to the limits of civilisation and yet no one has found the gods on the top of Mount Olympus or navigated the River Styx or even found the places mentioned in the epic poetry of Homer and Virgil. I don't believe all that. But Christianity has the ring of authenticity. It's about ordinary people, not kings and queens, tyrants and monsters. And it's hardly two hundred years since Jesus Christ lived and died. Not thousands of years ago, like Heracles and Theseus and Odysseus. And the message of Christianity is forgiveness. If you agree to follow the Christian religion, then whatever you do, however bad your crimes, you will be forgiven, and go to Paradise. Do you think Aphrodite can do that?"

"That's not fair. Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love. If you serve her, she will protect you both in this life and the next."

"Oh, Diana. Do you really believe in Aphrodite? Do you really think that there is a family of deities who bicker amongst themselves but also have the time to help people who serve them? What happens when, like Paris, you serve the wrong god and lose out in the cosmic politics? With Jesus Christ I know that if I am baptised, if I confess my sins, and if I attend religious services, I shall go to Heaven."

"But what are these religious services? I've heard that Christians are cannibals and eat human flesh and drink human blood."

"That's the mystery of Christ. Transubstantiation. Anyway, that's what the priest says. So come on, Diana. Can't you see that your faith is misled and that the true faith is that of Jesus Christ? After all, there are so many Christians in the Empire now, that Christ may indeed have already triumphed."

At that moment Diana didn't feel so confident in her beliefs. But as she nestled in against Andromeda's body, she found that however much she might start doubting the substance of her faith, she was becoming more and more certain of its spirit. She worshipped the Goddess of Love, and whether she could be sure of its historical veracity, which was surely the proper matter for debate by the scholars, she knew that she believed in love itself.

And here in Andromeda was the object of her love. As it had been for so many years. And so it was to be again that night and through to the early morning. The two girls soon bowed to the urgency of their physical passion: Diana for the softness and smoothness of Andromeda's womanly body and Andromeda for her lover's more slender, almost adolescent frame. Diana's mouth and lips ventured again to Andromeda's cunt, taking those lips again in her teeth, her tongue deep inside the slightly roughened flesh of her vulva, while her nostrils luxuriated again in that rich sour taste she so loved. While her own vagina was lapped and licked and soaked by Andromeda's tongue, her vaginal juices mixed with her lover's saliva.

But in amongst the saltiness of the sweat and saliva, and the pungency of the sexual juices, and the odour of passion, as the two girls' bodies slid over and about each other, there was also the trace of Diana's tears. She knew now that although she served the Goddess of Love, that very service that she so deeply believed in would now mean that she would be parted from the object of her love. Much as she enjoyed her sex with her clients, and enjoyed her lovemaking with the other temple prostitutes, and would joyfully service the temple mother as often as was required, nobody in her life had given her the passion and depth of love that Andromeda had given her. And she felt sure that nobody had ever received the intensity of love that Diana was giving to Andromeda.

And now, for the love of the Goddess of Love, she would now be parted from the object of her love. It saddened her so much to know that her darling Andromeda was now a pagan and a common whore, and who would be destined for an eternity at the pleasure of Hades. But Diana had her beliefs. They were sincerely and profoundly felt. And nothing would part her from her faith. Not even the love of another woman.