‘Only you are not quite a man yet, but half a monk still, eh? I must know that before I help you, my pretty boy. Are you a monk still, or a man?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah, ha, ha!’ laughed she shrilly. ‘And these Christian dogs don’t know what a man means? Are you a monk, then? leaving the man alone, as above your understanding.’
‘I?—I am a student of philosophy.’
‘But no man?’
‘I am a man, I suppose.’
‘I don’t; if you had been, you would have been making love like a man to that heathen woman many a month ago.’
‘I—to her?’
‘Yes, I-to her!’ Said Miriam, coarsely imitating his tone of shocked humility. ‘I, the poor penniless boy-scholar, to her, the great, rich, wise, worshipped she-philosopher, who holds the sacred keys of the inner shrine of the east wind—and just because I am a man, and the handsomest man in Alexandria, and she a woman, and the vainest woman in Alexandria; and therefore I am stronger than she, and can twist her round my finger, and bring her to her knees at my feet when I like, as soon I open my eyes, and discover that I am a man. Eh, boy! Did she ever teach you that among her mathematics and metaphysics, and gods and goddesses?’
Philammon stood blushing scarlet. The sweet poison had entered, and every vein glowed with it for the first time in his life. Miriam saw her advantage.