stanched and undetained. Grief, something keener still
perhaps, had claimed her as its own. She bent lower. Then Misery looked up
at Compassion.

The Master stretched his hand. For a moment it rested on her head. She
quivered and clutched at her throat; and as he withdrew that hand, in
which all panaceas were, from her gown she took a little box, opened it,
and dropping the contents where the tears had fallen, with a sudden
movement she caught her hair and poured its lava on his feet.

An aroma of beckoning oases filled the small room, passed into the recess,
mounted to the roof, pervaded and penetrated it, and escaped to the sky
above.

And still she wept. Judas no longer saw her tears, he heard them. They
fell swiftly one after another, like the ripple of the rain. A sob broke
from her, but in it was something which foretokened peace, the sob which
comes to those who have conceived a despairing hope, and suddenly
intercept its fulfilment. Her hands trembled; the little box fell from her
and broke. The noise it made exorcised the silence.

The Master turned to his host. "I have a word to say to you."

Simon stroked his beard and bowed.

"There was once a man who had two debtors. One owed him five hundred
pence, the other fifty. Both were poor, and because of their poverty the
debt of each he forgave."

For an instant Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence
which was to illuminate the world, "Tell me, Simon," he inquired, "which
was the more grateful?"

Simon assumed an air of perplexity, and glanced cunningly from one guest
to another. Presently he laughed outright.

"Why, the one who owed the most, of course."

Reulah suppressed a giggle. By the expression of the others it was patent
that to them also the jest appealed. Only Judas did not seem to have
heard; he sat bolt upright, fumbling Mary with his violent eyes.

The Master made a gesture of assent, and turned to where Mary crouched.
She was staring at him with that look which the magnetized share with
animals.

"You see her?"

Straightening himself, he leaned on his elbow and scrutinized his host.

"Simon, I am your guest. When I entered here there was no kiss to greet
me, there was no oil for my head, no water for my feet. But this woman
whom you despise has not ceased to embrace them. She has washed them with
her tears, anointed them with nard, and dried them with her hair. Her
sins, it may be, are many, but, Simon, they are