“Yet that was in my mind, Miriam.”
Her eyes grew soft, but she answered:
“Then, Marcus, I pray you, put it out of your mind, since between us rolls a great sea.”
“Is it named Caleb?” he asked bitterly.
She smiled and shook her head. “You know well that it has no such name.”
“Tell me of this sea.”
“It is easy. You are a Roman worshipping the Roman gods; I am a Christian worshipping the God of the Christians. Therefore we are forever separate.”
“Why? I do not understand. If we were married you might come to think like me, or I might come to think like you. It is a matter of the spirit and the future, not of the body and the present. Every day Christians wed those who are not Christians; sometimes, even, they convert them.”
“Yes, I know; but in my case this may not be—even if I wished that it should be.”
“Why not?”