“What is the truth?” asked Addie curiously.

“Why, that morality was made for man, not man for morality,” said Sidney.  “That chimera of meaningless virtue which the Hebrew has brought into the world is the last monster left to slay.  The Hebrew view of life is too one-sided.  The Bible is a literature without a laugh in it.  Even Raphael thinks the great Radical of Galilee carried spirituality too far.”

“Yes, he thinks he would have been reconciled to the Jewish doctors and would have understood them better,” said Addie, “only he died so young.”

“That’s a good way of putting it!” said Sidney admiringly.  “One can see Raphael is my cousin despite his religious aberrations.  It opens up new historical vistas.  Only it is just like Raphael to find excuses for everybody, and Judaism in everything.  I am sure he considers the devil a good Jew at heart; if he admits any moral obliquity in him, he puts it down to the climate.”

This made Esther laugh outright, even while there were tears for Raphael in the laugh.  Sidney’s intellectual fascination reasserted itself over her; there seemed something inspiring in standing with him on the free heights that left all the clogging vapors and fogs of moral problems somewhere below; where the sun shone and the clear wind blew and talk was a game of bowls with Puritan ideals for ninepins.  He went on amusing her till the curtain rose, with a pretended theory of Mohammedology which he was working at.  Just as for the Christian Apologist the Old Testament was full of hints of the New, so he contended was the New Testament full of foreshadowings of the Koran, and he cited as a most convincing text, “In Heaven, there shall be no marrying, nor giving in marriage.”  He professed to think that Mohammedanism was the dark horse that would come to the front in the race of religions and win in the west as it had won in the east.

“There’s a man staring dreadfully at you, Esther,” said Addie, when the curtain fell on the second act.

“Nonsense!” said Esther, reluctantly returning from the realities of the play to the insipidities of actual life.  “Whoever it is, it must be at you.”

She looked affectionately at the great glorious creature at her side, tall and stately, with that winning gentleness of expression which spiritualizes the most voluptuous beauty.  Addie wore pale sea-green, and there were lilies of the valley at her bosom, and a diamond star in her hair.  No man could admire her more than Esther, who felt quite vain of her friend’s beauty and happy to bask in its reflected sunshine.  Sidney followed her glance and his cousin’s charms struck him with almost novel freshness.  He was so much with Addie that he always took her for granted.  The semi-unconscious liking he had for her society was based on other than physical traits.  He let his eyes rest upon her for a moment in half-surprised appreciation, figuring her as half-bud, half-blossom.  Really, if Addie had not been his cousin and a Jewess!  She was not much of a cousin, when he came to cipher it out, but then she was a good deal of a Jewess!