He had come to fetch her, cost him what it might, and to carry her away
to his country-home, near Arsinoe on the coast. It was not that he had
any mad desire to make her his own, but that he thought it his most
urgent duty to preserve his inexperienced brother from the danger into
which his foolish passion for the little singing-girl was certain to
plunge him. A purse full of gold, and a necklace of turquoise and
diamonds, which he had purchased from a jeweller in the Jews' quarter for
a sum for which he had often sold a ship-load of corn or a whole cellar
full of wine or oil, were to supplement his proposals; and he went
straight to the point, asking the girl simply and plainly to leave her
friends and accompany him to Arsinoe. When she asked him, in much
astonishment, "What to do there?" he told her he wanted a cheerful
companion; he had taken a fancy to her saucy little nose, and though he
could not flatter himself that he had ever found favor in her eyes he had
brought something with him which she would certainly like, and which
might help him to win her kindness. He was not niggardly, and if this--
and this--and he displayed the sparkling necklace and laid the purse on
her pillow--could please her she might regard them as an earnest of more,
as much more as she chose, for his pockets were deep.

Dada did not interrupt him, for the growing indignation with which she
heard him took away her breath. This fresh humiliation was beyond the
bounds of endurance; and when at last she recovered her powers of speech
and action, she flung the purse off the divan, and as it fell clattering
on the floor, she kicked it away as far as possible, as though it were
plague-tainted. Then, standing upright in front of her suitor, she
exclaimed:

"Shame upon you all! You thought that because I am a poor girl, a