“How strange, Jew, whenever we touch a new belief, or an old one, new to us, we find peoples following an idea or ideal. There has been a crying through the world ever for a some one for pilgrim man to follow. How passing strange; our century wails the self-same cry; and somehow it always happens that this matter has something to do with woman. See; ‘_Kneph_’ was the monstrous birth of those who thought man superlative, and greatness to be by being all man. How sharply the devotion to the Madonna cuts across this! She was mother of the noblest, and man in the begetting left out. Oh, my head’s full of thoughts, but they tumble along toward my lips without system or leader. I talk like a madman, though I think like a Seraph.” “I think, Sir Charleroy, that a healthy son of Adam sneering at all women, publicly, reproaches himself as being one who never knew a true one.” “More javelins! I’d swear, anyhow, that if I’d been Adam, no winged serpent of gaudy colors and honey tongue could have lured me from Paradise, Eve or no Eve!” “If thou hadst been there thou wouldst have been lonesome with the speechless herds; finding the new woman, would have loved her like the boy who mates just to see how it seems.” “Oh, likely!” “Then if thy ward or angel attempted to elope with the devil thou wouldst have gone along, too, from curiosity, as lad to a hippodrome, just to see the finish; or as thousands of men since Adam, tied to wayward women, have gone down with them to darkness, preferring hell with their idols to heaven without.” “I suppose so. Oh, how strangely are the fates of men and women interwoven.” “Then thou dost not now elect to live a hermit, without the companionship of the frail, fair and faithful sex which are said to double our joys?” “Yes and multiply our sorrows!” “I suspect thou’lt change thy late creed very soon.” “Why so?” “I expect ere long that we’ll meet some living blossoms.” “By my token, that’s good news, Ichabod.” “So, then, thou art ready to recant?” Evening came, and the pilgrims supped on the meager meat they were able to procure in the fields. “Now poet of the Palm Land mellow my dreams by possessing me of thy meditations. What fixes thy gaze?” “The monarch of the sky; after a day such as this has been, he seems to me to take his departure with a peculiar sort of triumphal sweep of his trailing splendors.” “Horus exulting over prostrate Set.” “But night, not the green-colored son of Osiris, conquers now, master.” “Night never conquers. It merely lives by sufferance; often routed by the invincible spears of the sun. Darkness creeps forth here because the golden charger in masterful strategy has gone elsewhere to rout other armies of the dark kingdom. Lay this to thy heart, good Jew.” “I do, as precious ointment to a blister. Enlarge me.” “There, Jew; see the fleecy clouds over Jordan. How grand!”