tention.
A presentiment quickened the beating of her heart; the fan became
motionless again.

"The Messala!" she said. "What could he say to so trouble you?"

"He is very much changed."

"You mean he has come back a Roman."

"Yes."

"Roman!" she continued, half to herself. "To all the world the
word means master. How long has he been away?"

"Five years."

She raised her head, and looked off into the night.

"The airs of the Via Sacra are well enough in the streets of the
Egyptian and in Babylon; but in Jerusalem--our Jerusalem--the
covenant abides."

And, full of the thought, she settled back into her easy place.
He was first to speak.

"What Messala said, my mother, was sharp enough in itself; but,
taken with the manner, some of the sayings were intolerable."

"I think I understand you. Rome, her poets, orators, senators,
courtiers, are mad with affectation of what they call satire."

"I suppose all great peoples are proud," he went on, scarcely
noticing the interruption; "but the pride of that people is
unlike all others; in these latter days it is so grown the
gods barely escape it."

"The gods escape!" said the mother, quickly. "More than one Roman
has accepted worship as his divine right."

"Well, Messala always had his share of the disagreeable quality.
When he was a child, I have seen him mock strangers whom even Herod
condescended to receive with honors; yet he always spared Judea.
For the first time, in conversation with me to-day, he trifled
with our customs and God. As you would have had me do, I parted
with him finally. And now, O my dear mother, I would know with more
certainty if there be just ground for the Roman's contempt. In what
am I his inferior? Is ours a lower order of people? Why should I,
even in Caesar's presence; feel the shrinking of a slave? Tell me
especially why, if I have the soul, and so choose, I may not hunt
the honors of the world in all its fields? Why may not I take sword
and indulge the passion of war? As a poet, why may not I sing of all
themes? I can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a merchant,
why not an artist like the Greek? Tell me, O my mother--and this is
the sum of my trouble--why may not a son of Israel do all a Roman
may?"

The reader will refer these questions back to the conversation in
the Market-place; the mother, listening with all her faculties
awake, from something which would have been lost upon one less
interested in him--from th