“We mind not the storm, and the God of our fathers will be with us. I pray thee, let us depart in peace.”
The Roman deigned no reply.
The color came and went in the face of the young Jew; for though but a youth, he penetrated the smooth mask of the Roman, and divined his treachery and cruelty.
Marcius again addressed himself to Rebecca.
“My fair Jewess! Thou shouldst thank the gods—or thy Hebrew Jehovah—for thy deliverance from the cold embrace of the Cydnus. We offer thee warmth and music and poetry and wine, and—be it so—love, whose cup we may gently quaff.”
Rebecca cast a beseeching look.
“O Roman citizen of Tarsus! I pray thee bid us to depart. We fear not the storm. The hearts of our father and mother will be made glad by our return. The Romans have honor! We will now go in peace.”
A sullen frown was the only reply.
With compressed lip and fiery blood coursing through every vein, Saulus bent his gaze upon the Roman, but was silent from the very intensity of his thoughts.
Marcius, heated by the wine which he had drunk with Leander, gradually became more harsh and pitiless.