would not burn thine ears with malediction!'

"'That would be holy dotage!'

"'Or a fine young man but would pale thee on a pike!'

"'Then let some one whom they hate less venomously, beseech them to
their own salvation,' implores the Darling.

"Whereupon the Gad beckons insinuatingly to Josephus.

"'Josephus,' says he, 'let us, being more lovable men than Titus, go
up unto these walls and give the Jews a chance to be kind.'

"Josephus turns pale, but Nicanor rides upon Jerusalem. And at that
what should a miscreant Jew do but string an arrow and plunge it
nicely, like a bodkin in a pincushion, in the fat shoulder of the Gad!
Alas! It was the ruin of the Holy City! When Titus, pale with concern,
reaches his friend kicking on the ground, does the Gad curse the Jews
and inveigh against the hardy walls that contain them? Not he! He
struggles about so that he may look into the eyes of Titus and
commands him to make war on them instantly under pain of the
accusation of partiality to them against his friends! And behold, war
is declared. I, with mine own eyes, saw siege laid effectively about
our unhappy city!"

She gazed at him with alarmed, angry, accusing eyes.

"And yet you do nothing!" she said to him.

He smiled and let his lazy glance slip over her, but he made no
response.

"O Philadelphus," she said to him, "how you affront opportunity!"

"There are more captivating things than such opportunity. I have known
from the beginning that there was nothing here."

She looked at him with unquiet eyes. Why, then, had he written so
confidently to her father, if he had not believed in the hope for
Judea?

"From the beginning?" she repeated with inquiry. "You wrote my father
from Caesarea--"

"Your father?" he repeated, smiling with insinuation.

"My father!"

"Who is your father?" he asked.

She turned away from him and walked to the other end of the garden. He
had never meant to aspire to the Judean throne! He had simply written
so determinedly to Costobarus, that the merchant of Ascalon would have
no hesitancy in giving him two hundred talents! In these past days,
she had learned enough that was blameworthy in this Philadelphus to
make him more than despicable in her eyes. Again, as hourly since the
last interview in the depression in the hills beyond the well, the
fine bigness of that lovable companion of his, that had vanished for
all time from her life, rose in radiant contrast. She turned back to
h