Page:Ben-Hur a tale of the Christ.djvu/112

Rh and, following them back to the Captivity, back to the foundation of the first Temple, back to the march from Egypt, we have absolute assurance that you are lineally sprung from Hur, the associate of Joshua. In the matter of descent sanctified by time, is not the honor perfect? Do you care to pursue further? if so, take the Torah, and search the Book of Numbers, and of the severity-two generations after Adam you can find the very progenitor of your house.&quot;

There was silence for a time in the chamber on the roof.

&quot;I thank you, O my mother,&quot; Judah next said, clasping both her hands in his; &quot;I thank you with all my heart. I was right in not having the good rector called in; he could not have satisfied me more than you have. Yet to make a family truly noble, is time alone sufficient?&quot;

&quot;Ah, you forget, you forget; our claim rests not merely upon time; the Lord's preference is our especial glory.&quot;

&quot;You are speaking of the race, and I, mother, of the family—our family. In the years since Father Abraham, what have they achieved? What have they done? What great things to lift them above the level of their fellows?&quot;

She hesitated, thinking she might all this time have mistaken his object. The information he sought might have been for more than satisfaction of wounded vanity. Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others. She trembled under a perception that this might be the supreme moment come to him; that as children at birth reach out their untried hands grasping for shadows, and crying the while, so his spirit might, in temporary blindness, be struggling to take hold of its impalpable future. They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling.

&quot;I have a feeling, my Judah,&quot; she said, patting his cheek with the hand he had been caressing—&quot;I have the feeling that all I have said has been in strife with an antagonist more real than imaginary. If Messala is the enemy, do not leave me to fight him in the dark. Tell me all he said.&quot;