Laodice heard this with a sinking heart. This was a strange house in which to live at no definite status, with a future blank and inscrutable.
"Is it, then, that you are wary of offending the over-nice exactions of music, that you do not sing?" the athlete demanded of Juventius.
"Song," replied the singer gravely, "is originally the expression of the highest exaltation. To sing before the high mark of feeling is reached is an insincerity."
"Alas, Juventius," the girl was saying, "how much difficulty you lay up for yourself in determining the limits of art! Teach broadly and the fulfilment of your laws will not be such a task for the overworked and irritable gods of art."
"Child!" Juventius cried passionately. "Your ignorance outreaches your presumption!"
"Fie! Fie!" the athlete put in comfortably. "Let us make a truce, for I announce to you the opportunity each to have whatever you wish. We are to have at the proper moment, according to the Jews, a celestial visitation which will enable us to have what we most desire."
"You announce it!" the girl scoffed indignantly. "I have heard of that ever since I was born!"
"I, too, have heard it," said Juventius.
"Well," said the unabashed athlete, "the Pharisee that brings Amaryllis her fruit is so full of it that he gets prophecies mixed with his prices and the patriarchs with his fruit. He says that there are those that declare he is already in the city."
"That he has been seen?" Juventius asked, after a little silence.