"All your mockery will not prevent my doing my duty." "Very right, very right," said his brother.

"Perhaps this damsel is unlike all the other singing-girls with whom I used so often to spend a jolly evening in my younger days.

Once, at Barca, I saw a white raven--but perhaps after all it was only a dove.

Your opinion, in this case, is at any rate better founded than mine, for I never thought twice about the girl and you did .-- But it is late; till to-morrow, Marcus." The brothers parted for the night, but when Demetrius found himself alone he walked up and down the room, shaking his head doubtfully.
Presently, when his body-slave came in to pack for him, he called out crossly: "Let that alone--I shall stay in Alexandria a few days longer." Marcus could not go to bed; his brother's scorn had shaken his soul to the foundations.

An inward voice told him that his more experienced senior might be right, but at the same time he hated and contemned himself for listening to its warnings at all.