"
"Your savings?" said Miriam, looking up. "Did you buy me, Marcus?"
"I suppose so, beloved," he answered.
"Then, then, I am your slave?"
"Not so, Miriam," he replied nervously. "As you know well, it is I who
am yours. All I ask of you is that you should become my wife."
"That cannot be, Marcus," she answered in a kind of cry. "You know that
it cannot be."
His face turned pale.
"After all that has come and gone between us, Miriam, do you still say
so?"
"I still say so."
"You could give your life for me, and yet you will not give your life to
me?"
"Yes, Marcus."
"Why? Why?"
"For the reasons that I gave you yonder by the banks of Jordan; because
those who begat me laid on me the charge that I should marry none who is
not a Christian. How then can I marry you?"
Marcus thought a moment.
"Does the book of your law forbid it?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No, but the dead forbid it, and rather will I join
them than break their command."
Again Marcus thought and spoke.
"Well, then, since I must, I will become a Christian."
She looked at him sadly and answered:
"It is not enough. Do you remember what I told you far away in the
village of the Essenes, that this is no matter of casting incense on an
altar, but rather one of a changed spirit.
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