"Do you know, yourself?" she questioned.
His eyes hardened.
"Who can know himself?" he parried, with a shrug of his heavy shoulders. "This much I know—that I am brute and man, slave and king. At times I am lower than man, who can be lower than any crawling beast; at times I am more than god, with all the world beneath me. Why? How should I tell?"
"You, who sing of birds and butterflies, of flowers in Summer, of sunshine and sweet love and the brightness of life!" she said bitterly and with reproach. "Indeed, you are two men, and I know not either. One, all men must hate and fear; the other—ah, the other is of the silver tongue. Why should this be? I can tell no more than you—I can but pray that that black beast may be tamed and stilled."
"I say I do not know!" Nicanor said sullenly. "And speak we of something else. I am one man, Nicanor, slave and teller of tales. That is all with which you have concern. And I do not need praying over."
"Have you no gods?" she asked him, shocked. He looked rather blank at her attack.
"Why, no," he said, and his voice held a faint tinge of surprise. "There are no gods in the bogs and fens and on the hills where I tended sheep. What gods with any sense would live in such parts as these? And I knew no need of them. Why should I have learned? When my mother would tell me of one God whom she worshipped, I would go and play. Is this your God?"
"Ay," she answered, without hesitation. "I think your mother, too, was Christian."
"Maybe," Nicanor answered with indifference. "But he is not the God of the mighty—of none but slaves and bondsmen and the humble, from all that hath been told to me."
"Of those who are oppressed," she said softly. "Wilt let me tell thee of Him? Of how He was born in a stable, with wise men journeying from the East, bearing gifts of homage?"