And we met on the instant.  There was no self-discussion, no waiting, wavering, to make certain.  She was mine the moment I looked upon her.  And by the same token she knew that I belonged to her above all men.  I strode to her.  She half-lifted from her couch as if drawn upward to me.  And then we looked with all our eyes, blue eyes and black, until Pilate’s wife, a thin, tense, overwrought woman, laughed nervously.  And while I bowed to the wife and gave greeting, I thought I saw Pilate give Miriam a significant glance, as if to say, “Is he not all I promised?” For he had had word of my coming from Sulpicius Quirinius, the legate of Syria.  As well had Pilate and I been known to each other before ever he journeyed out to be procurator over the Semitic volcano of Jerusalem.

Much talk we had that night, especially Pilate, who spoke in detail of the local situation, and who seemed lonely and desirous to share his anxieties with some one and even to bid for counsel.  Pilate was of the solid type of Roman, with sufficient imagination intelligently to enforce the iron policy of Rome, and not unduly excitable under stress.

But on this night it was plain that he was worried.  The Jews had got on his nerves.  They were too volcanic, spasmodic, eruptive.  And further, they were subtle.  The Romans had a straight, forthright way of going about anything.  The Jews never approached anything directly, save backwards, when they were driven by compulsion.  Left to themselves, they always approached by indirection.  Pilate’s irritation was due, as he explained, to the fact that the Jews were ever intriguing to make him, and through him Rome, the catspaw in the matter of their religious dissensions.  As was well known to me, Rome did not interfere with the religious notions of its conquered peoples; but the Jews were for ever confusing the issues and giving a political cast to purely unpolitical events.

Pilate waxed eloquent over the diverse sects and the fanatic uprisings and riotings that were continually occurring.

“Lodbrog,” he said, “one can never tell what little summer cloud of their hatching may turn into a thunderstorm roaring and rattling about one’s ears.  I am here to keep order and quiet.  Despite me they make the place a hornets’ nest.  Far rather would I govern Scythians or savage Britons than these people who are never at peace about God.  Right now there is a man up to the north, a fisherman turned preacher, and miracle-worker, who as well as not may soon have all the country by the ears and my recall on its way from Rome.”

This was the first I had heard of the man called Jesus, and I little remarked it at the time.  Not until afterward did I remember him, when the little summer cloud had become a full-fledged thunderstorm.

“I have had report of him,” Pilate went on.  “He is not political.  There is no doubt of that.  But trust Caiaphas, and Hanan behind Caiaphas, to make of this fisherman a political thorn with which to prick Rome and ruin me.”