She looked again at his face. It was not Greek or Roman, neither more indicative of her own blood.
"Are you a Jew?" she asked.
He remembered that she had seen him in a synagogue.
"I was," he said after a silence.
She looked at him a moment before she made comment.
"I never heard a Jew say it that way before."
He acknowledged the rebuke with the flash of a smile that appeared only in his eyes.
"A Jew entirely Jewish wears the mark on him. You have had to ask if I were a Jew. Would I be consistent to claim to be that which in no wise shows to be in me?"
"It is time to be a Jew or against the Jews," she said gravely. "There is no middle ground concerning Judea at this hour."
Serious words from the lips of a woman in whom a man expects to find entertainment are obtrusive, a paradox. Still the new generosity in his heart for this girl made any manner she chose, engaging, so that it showed him the sight of her face and gave him the sound of her voice.