or position, nor heart awaiting him!"
she finished pointedly.

The Maccabee pulled one of his stubborn locks that had fallen over his
eyes. The smile grew less vivid.

He had no comment to make to this. Meanwhile Laodice looked at him.

"Shall--you be with--your friend in Jerusalem?" she asked.

"It depends on his wife," he retorted with a grimace.

She would be glad if this tall, comely trifler, with a voice as
musical as some grave-toned viol, were to be seen from time to time to
relieve the tedium of life with the offensive Philadelphus. This
admission instantly brought a shock to her. She had learned to study
herself in these last few days since she had become aware of the ways
of the world. Life was to be no longer a period of obedience to laws
which the Torah had laid down; it was to be a long resistance against
desirable things that she yearned for but which she dared not have.
She learned at this moment that she could be her own chief
stumbling-block, and that love, the most precious illumination in
every life, might be a destruction and a consuming fire. She looked at
this man, who lounged beside her, with a new sensation. He was
winsome, and therefore the more perilous. That smooth insulting
stranger whom this man had revealed as her husband with all his
violence and license was a humble and harmless thing compared to this
one, who had snared her by his care of her and by his charming self.

She felt a desire to cry out for Momus to take her back to the inner
chamber of the shut house in Ascalon, away from her danger to herself
and from the sight of the man who had done her no harm--yet.

She did not know how plainly all this wrote itself on her candid face.
Wise pupil of that unbridled school, the city of Diana, he could read
in that slight frown on her forehead and the pathetic curve of her
lips, that she was contented with him--that she was not glad to go on
to that husband in Jerusalem. He was near to her before she knew he
had moved.

"After all," he was saying in a low voice, "I am glad you are going to
Jerusalem. You shall not be lost from me again. Whose house shall I
ask for when I can not endure separation longer?"

She moved away from him. There was a step behind her and Laodice,
coloring shamedly, looked straight into the accusing eyes of Momus who
stood there. The stranger rose.

"I shall see you again," he said to her.

He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. The next instant he