his knees. This
grasping at the slightest excuse to remain exasperated the perplexed
Momus, who could not understand the stranger's assurance. But the
Maccabee failed to see him.

"There is," he said to Laodice. "One can journey with you. I am under
no restriction, and the rabbis do not bind you against me. I can
secure you comforts along the way, and give you protection. There in
no such dire need that I enter Jerusalem under seven days."

Laodice was confused by this sudden offer of help from a stranger in
whom her confidence was not entirely settled. Nevertheless a warmth
and pleasure crept into her heart benumbed with sorrow. She did not
look at Momus, fearing instinctively that the command in her old
servant's eyes would not be of a kind with the grateful response she
meant to give this stranger.

"I have no right to expect so much--from a stranger," she said.

"Then I shall not be a stranger," he declared promptly. "Call
me--Hesper--of Ephesus."

"Ephesus!" she echoed, looking up quickly.

"The maddest city in the world," he replied. "Dost know it?"

She hesitated. Could she say with entire truth that she did not know
Ephesus? Had she not read those letters that Philadelphus had written
to her father, which were glowing with praise of the proud city of
Diana? Was it not as if she had seen the Odeum and the great Theater,
the Temple with its golden cows, the mount and the plain and the broad
wandering of the Rivers Hermus, Cayster and Maenander? Had she not
made maps of it from her young husband's accounts and then with
enthusiasm traced his steps by its stony, hilly streets from forum to
stadium and from school to museum? Had she not dreamed of its shallow
port, its rugged highways and its skyey marshes? It had been her pride
to know Ephesus, although she had never laid eyes upon it. Even she
had come to believe that she would know an Ephesian by his aggressive
joy in life! It went hard with her to deny that she knew that city
which she had all but seen.

The Maccabee observed her hesitation and when she looked up to answer,
his eyes full of question were resting upon her.

"I do not know Ephesus," she said quickly. "Are--are you a native?"

"No."

She wanted mightily to know if he had met the young Philadelphus in
that city, but she feared to ask further lest she betray him.

"A great city," he went on, "but there are greater pagan cities. It is
not like Jerusalem, which has no counterpart in the w