Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/209

 hindered his imagination from getting to Beyrout: he had been used to unite restless travel with punctilious observation. But Deronda's last sentence answered its purpose.

"So—you would perhaps have been such a man as he if your education had not hindered; for you are like him in features:—yet not altogether, young man. He had an iron will in his face: it braced up everybody about him. When he was quite young he had already got one deep upright line in his brow. I see none of that in you. Daniel Charisi used to say, 'Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all. What he despised most was indifference. He had longer reasons than I can give you."

"Yet his knowledge was not narrow?" said Deronda, with a tacit reference to the usual excuse for indecision—that it comes from knowing too much.

"Narrow? no," said Kalonymos, shaking his head with a compassionate smile. "From his childhood upward, he drank in learning as easily as the plant sucks up water. But he early took to medicine and theories about life and health. He travelled to many countries, and spent much