Fabricius took the old man to his private room, and as a matter of course there was some bargaining between them. The Roman noble pleaded with much truth the badness of the times; the Jewish merchant pleaded with much plausibility the poverty of his race, and his own especial losses on this purchase. But the arrangement was soon concluded; and Eleazar and Miriam returned alone to the tall houses beyond the Tiber, leaving Ethne, Baithene, and the dog in the palace on the Aventine.
As Miriam went, she bowed with an Oriental gesture, and kissed the hand of Damaris.
“Your Christ is good,” she murmured with a quivering voice, “and so are some of His Christians.”
“Our Christ is yours!” said Damaris, in a low voice.
Miriam made no reply for a moment, and then with passionate intensity she said—
“Pray to your God and ours, that if your Christ is ours we may know it in time, I and my husband, and our captive child whom we have lost.”
