He looked up.  Two women were standing before him.

“I seek Amaryllis, the Seleucid,” he said, recovering himself.

“I am she,” the Greek said, stepping forward.

“Thou entertainest Laodice, daughter of Costobarus of Ascalon?” he added.

The Greek bowed.

“I would see her,” he said bluntly.

Amaryllis signed to the woman at her side.

“This is she,” she said simply.

The Maccabee looked quickly at the woman.  After his close communication with the beautiful girl for whom his heart warmed as it had never done before, he was instantly aware of an immense contrast between her and the woman who had been introduced to him at that moment.  They were both Jewesses; both were beautiful, each in her own way; both appeared intelligent and winsome.  But he loved the girl, and this woman stood in the way of that love.  Therefore her charms were nullified; her latent faults intensified; all in all she repelled him because she was an obstacle.

The injustice in his feelings toward her did not occur to him.  He was angry because she had come; he hated her for her stateliness; he found himself looking for defects in her and belittling her undeniable graces.  Confused and for the moment without plan, he looked at her frowning, and with cold astonishment the woman gazed back at him.

“Thou art Laodice, daughter of Costobarus?” he asked, to gain time.

She inclined her head.

“When—­when dost thou expect Philadelphus?” he asked next.

“Why do you ask?” she parried.

“I—­I have a message for him,” he essayed finally.  “Is he here?”

“Tell me, who art thou?” the woman asked pointedly.

A vision of the girl, flushed and trembling with pleasure at sight of him, flashed with poignant effect upon him at that moment.  The warmth and softness of her hands under the pressure of his happy lips was still with him.  It would be infidelity to his own feelings to renounce her then.  It was becoming a physical impossibility for him to accept this other woman.

He hesitated and reddened.  An old subterfuge occurred to him at a desperate minute.

“I—­I am Hesper—­of Ephesus,” he essayed.

“What is thy business with Philadelphus?” the woman persisted.

Again the Maccabee floundered.  It had been easy to invent a story to keep the woman he loved from discovering that he was a married man, but the point in question was different.  Now, filled with dismay and indignation, apprehension and reluctance, his fertile mind failed him at the moment of its greatest need.

And the eyes of the Greek, filling with suspicion and intense interest, rested upon him.

“I asked,” the actress repeated calmly, “thy business with Philadelphus.”

At that instant a tremendous shock shook the house to its foundations; the hanging lamps lurched; the exedra jarred and in an instant several of the servants appeared at various openings into passages.  Before any of the group could stir, a second thunderous shock sent a tremor over the room, and a fragment of marble detached from a support overhead and dropped to the pavement.