e still for me. Alas, that the Messiah has come
and gone!"

It was his first reference to the great calamity he had told to her a
short time before. Its recurrence after she had resolved to regard it
as an impossible and blasphemous tale brought a chill to her heart.

"If I can prove to you that there is no hope for Jerusalem, what
then?" he asked suddenly.

She flung off the question with a gesture.

"Answer me. What then?"

"It is unimaginable what shall come to pass when God deserts His own."

"No need for imaginings. Look at Jerusalem and observe the fact. And
if we be abandoned, what fealty do we owe to a God that deserts us? If
you believe or not you are lost. Let us go out and live."

"If God has deserted us," she said scornfully, "how shall we be
happier elsewhere than here?"

"Every god to its own country. The Olympians are a jovial lot. I have
seen Joy's very self in heathendom."

She moved away but he rose and followed her.

"Whoever you are," he said in another tone, "your heritage of
innocence and earnestness is plain as an open scroll upon your face.
Nothing in all the world so appeals to the generosity in the heart of
a man as the purity of the woman who is pure. I have said that I am
your friend. I do not hold it against you that you doubt that word.
Nothing remains but the deed to confirm it. This place is lost--as
good as a heap of ashes and splintered rock, this hour! Come away!
I'll sacrifice the treasure to protect you!"

"Philadelphus," she said gravely, "we were sent hither to succeed or
to suffer the penalty of our failure. My father died that we might
have this opportunity. We must use it, or perish with it!"

He shook his head and walked away a step or two.

"You have not the true meaning of life," he said. "Indeed how few of
us understand! Obstacles are not an incentive toward attaining
impossible things. They are barriers set up by the kindly disposed
gods to inform man that he is opposing destiny when he aspires to
things he should not have. We were not made to fling ourselves against
mighty opposition throughout the little daylight we have; to wound
ourselves, to deny ourselves, to alienate that winsome sprite
Pleasure, to attain something which was not intended for us by the
signs of the obstructions placed in our paths. Who are we that we
should achieve mightily! What are we when the gods have done with us,
but a handful of dust! Who saves himself from age and unloveliness