Stewart replaced his pipe, blew a thick wreath of smoke, and sighed again.
"Yes," he replied, after a pause; "it recalls to me--a woman."
Ezra laughed half sadly, half mockingly.
"Always the Eternal feminine of George Sand."
Keith sat up cross-legged in front of the fire and shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't be cynical old chap," he said, glancing round; "I'm sick of hearing the incessant railing against women--good heavens! are we men so pure ourselves, that we can afford to cast stones against the sex to which our mothers and sisters belong."
"I did not mean to be cynical," replied Ezra, clasping his hands round one of his knees, "I only quoted Sand, because when a man is thinking, it is generally--a woman.
"Or a debt--or a crime--or a sorrow," interposed the other quickly; "we can ring the changes on all of them."
"Who is cynical now?" asked the Jew, with a smile.
"Not I," denied Keith, emphatically, drawing hard at his pipe; "or if I am, it is only that thin veneer of cynicism, under which we hide our natural feelings now-a-days; but the music took me back to the time when 'Plancus was consul'--exactly twelve months ago."