midnight
To him , if to any one , would she give her hand , and she had explained herself to this effect to her father when he informed her of Ben Jochai 's suit , and Apollodorus , who had lost his wife several years before , had neither the wish nor the power to put any pressure on his pretty darling . To be sure the temporizing nature of the man rendered it very difficult to him to give a decided no to his venerable old friend ; but it had to be done sooner or later , and the present evening seemed to him an appropriate moment for this unpleasant task . He was alone with his guests . His daughter had gone to the house of a friend to look on at the gay doings in the street , his three sons were out , all the slaves had leave to enjoy their holiday till midnight ; nothing was likely to disturb them , and so , after many warm expressions of his deep respect , he found courage to confess to them that he could not support Ben Jochai 's pretensions . His child , he said , clung too fondly to Alexandria to wish to quit it , and his learned young friend would be but ill suited with a wife who was accustomed to freer manners and habits , and could hardly feel herself at ease in a home where the laws of her fathers were strictly observed , and in which therefore no kind of freedom of life would be tolerated . Gamaliel let the Alexandrian speak to the end , but then , as his nephew was beginning to argue against their host 's hesitancy , the old man abruptly interrupted him . Drawing up his figure , which was a little bent , to its full height , and passing his hand among the blue veins and fine wrinkles that marked his high forehead , he began : Our house was decimated in our wars against the Romans , and among the daughters of our race Ben Akiba found not one in Palestine who seemed to him worthy to marry his son .