"Sir," she asked with gentle indignation, "is it worth your while to play off these pretty phrases upon me? We have met for an hour; we separate--for a lifetime."
"I do not see the need of that. Oh, the truth may as well out. I wish it least of all things."
"Yet it is so. Come, let my hand go; the marble must be finished and packed."
The face of Marcus became troubled, as though he were reasoning with himself, as though he wished to take her at her word and go, yet could not.
"Is it ended?" asked Miriam presently, considering him with her quiet eyes.
"I think not; I think it is but begun. Miriam, I love you."
"Marcus," she answered steadily, "I do not think I should be asked to listen to such words."
"Why not? They have always been thought honest between man and woman."
"Perhaps, when they are meant honestly, which in this case can scarcely be."
He grew hot and red. "What do you mean? Do you suppose----"
"I suppose nothing, Captain Marcus."
"Do you suppose," he repeated, "that I would offer you less than the place of wife?"
"Assuredly not," she replied, "since to do so would be to insult you. But neither do I suppose that you really meant to offer me that place."
"Yet that was in my mind, Miriam."
Her eyes grew soft, but she answered: "Then, Marcus, I pray you, put it out of your mind, since between us rolls a great sea."
"Is it named Caleb?" he asked bitterly.
She smiled and shook her head. "You know well that it has no such name."
"Tell me of this sea."
"It is easy. You are a Roman worshipping the Roman gods; I am a Christian worshipping the God of the Christians. Therefore we are forever separate."
"Why? I do not understand. If we were married you might come to think like me, or I might come to think like you. It is a matter of the spirit and the future, not of the body and the present. Every day Christians wed those who are not Christians; sometimes, even, they convert them."
"Yes, I know; but in my case this may not be--even if I wished that it should be."
"Why not?"
"Because both by the command of my murdered father and of her own desire my mother laid it on me with her dying breath that I should take to husband no man who was not of our faith."
"And do you hold yourself to be bound by this command?"
"I do, without doubt and to the end."