To be sure the temporizing nature of the man rendered it very difficult to him to give a decided no to his venerable old friend; but it had to be done sooner or later, and the present evening seemed to him an appropriate moment for this unpleasant task.

He was alone with his guests.  His daughter had gone to the house of a friend to look on at the gay doings in the street, his three sons were out, all the slaves had leave to enjoy their holiday till midnight; nothing was likely to disturb them, and so, after many warm expressions of his deep respect, he found courage to confess to them that he could not support Ben Jochai’s pretensions.  His child, he said, clung too fondly to Alexandria to wish to quit it, and his learned young friend would be but ill suited with a wife who was accustomed to freer manners and habits, and could hardly feel herself at ease in a home where the laws of her fathers were strictly observed, and in which therefore no kind of freedom of life would be tolerated.

Gamaliel let the Alexandrian speak to the end, but then, as his nephew was beginning to argue against their host’s hesitancy, the old man abruptly interrupted him.  Drawing up his figure, which was a little bent, to its full height, and passing his hand among the blue veins and fine wrinkles that marked his high forehead, he began: 

Our house was decimated in our wars against the Romans, and among the daughters of our race Ben Akiba found not one in Palestine who seemed to him worthy to marry his son.  But the report of the good fortune of the Alexandrian branch of our family had reached Judea, and Ben Akiba thought that he would do like our father Abraham, and he sent me, his Eliezer, into a strange land to win the daughter of a kinsman to wife for his Isaac.  Now, who and what the young man is, and the esteem in which he and his father are held by men—­”

“I know well,” interrupted Apollodorus, “and my house has never been so highly honored as in your visit.”

“And notwithstanding,” continued the Rabbi, “we must return home as we came; and indeed this will not only suit you best, but us too, and my brother, whose ambassador I am, for after what I have learnt from you within this last hour we must in any case withdraw our suit.  Do not interrupt me!  Your Ismene scorns to veil her face, and no doubt it is a very pretty one to look upon—­you have trained her mind like that of a man, and so she seeks to go her own way.  That may be all very well for a Greek woman, but in the house of Ben Akiba the woman must obey her husband’s will, as the ship obeys the helm, and have no will of her own; her husband’s will always coincides with what the law commands, which you yourself learnt to obey.”

“We recognize its excellence,” replied Apolloderus, but even if all the laws which Moses received on Sinai were binding on all mortals alike, the various ordinances which were wisely laid down for the regulation of the social life of our fathers, are not universally applicable for the children of our day.  And least of all can we observe them here, where, though true to our ancient faith, we live as Greeks among Greeks.”