"Nay, but it preaches universal love. Could I teach thee that, sorrow should never approach thee or me henceforth!"
"I fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously.
"Not wholly," he admitted. "I have not yet been able to agree with them, that I, Justin Classicus, scholar and Sadducee, should find it in my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks Aramaic, rejoices on conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him."
He smiled, and Justin Classicus' face was helped by a smile. Mirth possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and lighted torches in his eyes. But Lydia looked across the Alexandrian housetops.
"Why dost thou seek this new philosophy, Justin?" she asked.
"To see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned. "If it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, I put mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!"
"Learn the universal love for thyself, Justin: learn to love the shepherd and thine enemy—learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be content with that, and no more!"
"The Lord forbid!" he cried. "If that should come to pass, learning this new philosophy, I pause, even now!"
"Enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone. "Save another hath possessed thy heart, I have no enemy—the Nazarenes recommending that one leave them out of one's catalogue of fellows!"
"Canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy? Hath thy search after their philosophy taught thee so much?"