wretchedly dressed; her scanty hair was gray, and her face was wrinkled
and shrunken. I thought, of course, she was a beggar, and was about to
give her something, when she clasped her hands in front of her and
exclaimed, 'How like! How like! How like!' 'Like whom?' said I. 'What are
you talking about?' 'Like your father,' she said, 'like your father! You
are so like him, you resemble him so much in form and feature, in the way
you sit, in everything, that you must be his son!' 'I have no doubt I am
my father's son,' said I, 'and what do you know about him?' 'I married
him,' she said. 'For nearly a year I was his wife, and then I foolishly
ran away and left him. What became of him I know not, nor how long he
lived, but he was a great deal older than I was, and must have passed away
many years ago. But thou art his image. He had the same ruddy face, the
same short white hair, the same broad shoulders, the same way of crossing
his legs as he sat. He must have married soon after I left him. Tell me,
whom did he marry? What was thy mother's name?' I gave her the name of my
real mother, and she shook her head. 'I never heard of her,' she said.
'Did thy father ever speak of me, a wife who ran away from him?' 'Yes; he
has spoken of you--that is, if you are Zalia, the daughter of an
oil-merchant of Rhodes?'

[Illustration: "'HOW LIKE!'"]

"'I am that woman,' she exclaimed, 'I am that woman! And did he mourn my
loss?'

"'Not much, I think, not much.' Then I became a little nervous, for if
this old woman talked to me much longer I was afraid, in spite of the
fact that I was an elderly man when she was a girl, that she would become
convinced that I could not be the son of the man who had once been her
husband, but must be that man himself. So I hastily excused myself on the