I
like you well, and above everything on earth I wish that ere my eyes
shut for the last time they may see your hand in her hand, and her hand
in your hand, man and wife before the face of all men. Yet I tell you
that now indeed you are a coward in a deeper fashion than that the
Romans dream of; you are a coward who try to work upon the weakness of
this poor girl's loving heart, who try in the hour of her sore distress
to draw her from the spirit, if not from the letter, of her duty. So
great a coward are you that you remind her even that she is your slave
and threaten to deal with her as you heathen deal with slaves. You put a
gloss upon the truth; you try to filch the fruit you may not pluck; you
say 'you may not marry me, but you are my property, and therefore if you
give way to your master it is no sin.' I tell you it is a sin, doubly
a sin, since you would bind the weight of it on her back as well as on
your own, and a sin that in this way or in that would bring its reward
to both of you."
"Have you finished?" asked Marcus coldly, but suffering Miriam to slip
from his arms back upon the couch.
"No, I have not finished; I spoke of the fruits of evil; now as my heart
prompts me I speak of the promise of good.
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