may. There was silence.

Momus made the camel kneel. He dismounted slowly, and began to undo
the tent-cloth in a roll beside the howdah. The woman rode up and
instantly the mute stepped between her and his young mistress and went
on with his work.

Laodice understood the question in the woman's attitude although, with
true sense of an inferior's place, the stranger did not speak.

"We are unclean," Laodice said with effort. "We have come from a
pestilential city and we have touched the dead. We can not enter a
town with these defilements upon us, except to present ourselves to a
priest for examination and separation. Furthermore, we must burn our
unessential belongings. If you are a Jewess all these things are known
to you."

The woman extended her hands, palms upward, with a grace that was
almost dainty.

"Lady," she said behind her unlifted veil, "I am an unlettered woman
and have been accustomed to the instruction of my masters. I am
obedient to the laws of our people."

"You would have been in less peril to have ridden alone," Laodice
sighed. "Our company has been no help to you."

"We can not say that confidently. There are worse things than
pestilence in the wilderness," the woman replied.

Momus seemed to observe more confidence than was natural in the ready
answers of this professed servant, and before he would leave Laodice
to pitch camp, he helped her to alight and drew her with him. The
woman remained on her mount.

Gathering up sticks, dead needles of cedar and last year's leaves, he
made a fire upon which he heaped fuel till it lighted up the near-by
slopes of the hills and roared jovially in the broad wind.

It was a pocket in the heart of high hills into which they had fled.
The bold, sure line of a Roman road divided it, cutting tyrannically
through the cowed hovels of the town as an arrow drives through a
flock of pigeons. On either side were the dim shapes of great rocks
and semi-recumbent cedars. Retiring into shadow were the darker
outlines of the surrounding circle of hills, rived by intervals of
black night where wadies entered. From their summits the flying arch
of the heavens sprang, printed with a few faint stars, but all
silvered with the flood-light of a moon cold and pure as the frost
itself. It was unsympathetic, aloof and wild--a cold place into which
to bring broken hearts to assume banishment from the comfort and
companionship of mankind.

Laodice slowly and with effort beg