ccusations respecting them.

To escape such accusations, he wandered far through the Orchard,
pausing now where the date-gatherers were busy, yet not too busy
to offer him of their fruit and talk with him; then, under the
great trees, to watch the nesting birds, or hear the bees swarming
about the berries bursting with honeyed sweetness, and filling all
the green and golden spaces with the music of their beating wings.

By the lake, however, he lingered longest. He might not look upon
the water and its sparkling ripples, so like sensuous life,
without thinking of the Egyptian and her marvellous beauty,
and of floating with her here and there through the night,
made brilliant by her songs and stories; he might not forget the
charm of her manner, the lightness of her laugh, the flattery of
her attention, the warmth of her little hand under his upon
the tiller of the boat. From her it was for his thought but
a short way to Balthasar, and the strange things of which he
had been witness, unaccountable by any law of nature; and from
him, again, to the King of the Jews, whom the good man, with such
pathos of patience, was holding in holy promise, the distance was
even nearer. And there his mind stayed, finding in the mysteries
of that personage a satisfaction answering well for the rest he
was seeking. Because, it may have been, nothing is so easy as
denial of an idea not agreeable to our wishes, he rejected the
definition given by Balthasar of the kingdom the king was coming to
establish. A kingdom of souls, if not intolerable to his Sadducean
faith, seemed to him but an abstraction drawn from the depths of
a devotion too fond and dreamy. A kingdom of Judea, on the other
hand, was more than comprehensible: such had been, and, if only
for that reason, might be again. And it suited his pride to think
of a new kingdom broader of domain, richer in power, and of a more
unapproachable splendor than the old one; of a new king wiser and
mightier than Solomon--a new king under whom, especially, he could
find both service and revenge. In that mood he resumed to the dowar.

The mid-day meal disposed of, still further to occupy himself,
Ben-Hur had the chariot rolled out into the sunlight for inspection.
The word but poorly conveys the careful study the vehicle underwent.
No point or part of it escaped him. With a pleasure which will be
better understood hereafter, he saw the pattern was Greek, in his
judgment preferable to the Roman