! Fie!" the athlete put in comfortably. "Let us make a truce, for
I announce to you the opportunity each to have whatever you wish. We
are to have at the proper moment, according to the Jews, a celestial
visitation which will enable us to have what we most desire."

"You announce it!" the girl scoffed indignantly. "I have heard of that
ever since I was born!"

"I, too, have heard it," said Juventius.

"Well," said the unabashed athlete, "the Pharisee that brings
Amaryllis her fruit is so full of it that he gets prophecies mixed
with his prices and the patriarchs with his fruit. He says that there
are those that declare he is already in the city."

"That he has been seen?" Juventius asked, after a little silence.

"No; merely suspected. They say that things go on in the Temple which
seem to show that some resident of their Olympus already inhabits the
air."

"I saw Seraiah to-day," one of the women said in a low voice.

"Silent as ever? Spotless as ever? Mysterious as ever?" the athlete
asked.

The woman who had spoken shook her head at him as if alarmed.

"I can not bear to hear him ridiculed," she said. "Somehow it seems
blasphemous. They say he marks every one who laughs in his hearing."

"They are not many," the girl said. "For the most part, the citizens
of Jerusalem feel as apprehensive about him as you do."

"I wonder that John will stay in the Temple with a god in it,"
Juventius said, as if he had not heard the rest of the discussion.

"John!" the athlete exclaimed. "John is an adventurer that believes
in nothing, has no cause and furthers this warfare for loot and the
possible chance of escape when the conflict comes."

"Simon is different," another said. "Now he is wild and mad and
insolent and foolhardy, because he believes that, no matter what
tangle the situation is in, the celestial emissary he expects will
straighten it out for him."

"In short, he means to work such a complexity here that the man who
unravels it must needs be divine."

At this moment the door that cut off the rest of the house from this
dining-room opened smartly and the supposed Philadelphus stepped in.
He closed the door behind him and glanced at the filled table. Those
there seated rose. He spoke to each one by name, and after they had
greeted him, they filed out into the court and the servants began to
remove the remnants of their meal. Laodice rose at sign of this
concerted deference to Philadelphus but sat down aga