al. He had not lied, she saw, and the threat was real.

"Is it yes?" he repeated.

There may be moments that prolong, but there are others in which time no
longer is; and as Mary shrank in the blight of Judas' stare, both felt
that the culmination of life was reached.

"No!"

The monosyllable dropped from her lips like a stone, yet even as it fell
the banner of Maccabaeus unfurled and flaunted in her face; the voice of
Esther murmured, and a vision of Judith saving a nation visited her, and,
continuing, made spots on the night.

Judas had flung her from him. She reeled; the violence roused her. Who was
she to consider herself when the security of the Master was at stake? How
should it matter though she died, if he were safe?

"It is my soul you ask," she cried. "Take it. If I had a thousand souls, I
would give each one for Him."

But she cried to the unanswering night. Where the road curved about the
shoulder of the Mount of Olives, for one second she saw a white robe
glisten. Agonized, she called again, but there was no one now to hear.

A little later, when the followers of the Lord issued from the house, Mary
lay before the door, her eyes closed, her head in the dust. They touched
her. She had fainted.

CHAPTER VIII.

VIII.

"They have him, they are taking him to Pilate."

It was Eleazer calling to his sister from the turn of the road. In a
moment he was at her side, dust-covered, his sandals torn, his pathetic
eyes dilated. He was breathless too, and, in default of words, with a
gesture that swept the Mount of Olives, he pointed to where the holy city
lay.

To Mary the morrow succeeding her swoon was a pall. Love, it may be, is a
forgetfulness of all things else, but despair is very actual. It takes a
hold on memory, inhabits it, and makes it its own. And during the day that
followed, Mary lay preyed upon by the acutest agony that ever tortured
woman yet. Early in the night, before her senses returned, the Master had
gone without mentioning whither. His destination may have been Ephraim,
Jericho even, or further yet, beyond the hollows of the Ghor. Then, again,
he might have loitered in the neighborhood, on the hill perhaps, in that
open-air solitude he loved so well, and for which so often he forsook the
narrowness of roofs and towns. But yet, in view of the Passover, he might
have gone to Jerusalem, and it was that idea that