"By the certainty of Death, I have," he said sententiously.
She looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget her, in his preoccupation.
"I am a generous woman, Marsyas," she said softly. "I do not resent thy lack of confidence in me!"
"Nay!" he exclaimed. "My lack of confidence, lady? What meanest thou?"
"In thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest signals of thy self-containment on thy brow. Wherefore, I am informed thou hast thoughts that I may not know!"
"But I spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind."
"O Marsyas, wert thou not Jewish, I should call thee unmanly. Listen!" She laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his.
"Thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's slander of the poor world in thee. The eye is a spaniel; the tyrant Prejudice controls even its images. I warned thee in Alexandria. I confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an elementary impulse rather than calculation. Flaccus is bad, but because he is in love. Agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is ambitious. What? Did the preachment afflict thee which I delivered the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?"
He shook his head.
"Nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said. "Thou offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and I, sworn to punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if I harken unto thee, to hold off my hand."