l; over all was the air of repose and occupancy that made
a home out of the burrow.

Though the place held a great number of refugees, the footstep of the
Maccabee wakened resounding emptiness. At the threshold he slackened
his step and looked with pathetic anxiety at whatever light on
Laodice's face would show her opinion of her refuge. But the uncertain
torch revealed nothing and he led her in and across to a solitary
place where rugs from some looted house had been folded up for a
pallet and spread about for carpets. She sat down and awaited his
speech.

He motioned to the spacious barrenness about him.

"Canst thou content thyself in this place?" he asked, hesitating.

She nodded, but feeling that her reply had not shown all that words
might, she lifted her face that he might see therein that which she
could not trust her lips to say.

It was her undoing. Her weakness overwhelmed her and burying her face
in the folds of her mantle, she wept.

After a dismayed silence, he bent over her and said with a quiver of
distress in his voice:

"I--I have work, here, to do, but I shall take thee out of the city
for better refuge--"

That she should seem to be grieving over the nature of the shelter
given her, stirred her deeply. She half rose and with the light
shining on her face, filled with gratitude in spite of her tears, took
his hand in both of hers and pressed it with pathetic insistence.

He understood her.

He laid a hand unsteady with its tremor of delight and young eagerness
upon the vitta and it slipped off her hair. As it dropped, the subtle
warm fragrance of the heavy locks, now braided in maidenly style,
reached him; the liveliness of her relaxed young figure communicated
itself to him without his touch; all the invitation of her
helplessness swept him to the very edge of abandoning his restraint.
On his dark face a transformation occurred. All the hardness, even his
years and his experience vanished from him and a soft recovering flush
faintly colored his cheeks. In that sudden bloom of beauty in his face
was stamped a realization of the far progress of his triumph. She was
in his house and dependent on him, within the very reach of his arms.

When she looked up at him again, she read all this in his face, and
instantly there returned to her, with warning intensity, the fear of
her love of him. The last obstacle but her own conscience that stood
between her and his perfect supremacy over her life