"And such beauty. Eh, my boy? Have I not been young? Dion, you are in love with this woman, up to your eyebrows, and therefore can see nothing except through her shape. The mists on the shore make pebbles look like castles, so the witchery of this beauty magnifies everything Jewish. Hush, boy! I know it. I have been as young as you."
Both lapsed into silence, except for an occasional ejaculation from Agathocles: "A Jewess! Well, why not? One must love something."
Was the old soldier merely tantalizing the young man, or was he voyaging over the seas of memory? At length he put his hand upon Dion's shoulder.
"This Jewess, my boy; is she very fair? Is she like the picture of your mother?"
"No, father; she is very different. Yet in soul they must be like; for surely the gods—surely the Lord could not make two so faultless without repeating the model."
"And she a Jewess! Well! well!"