Her eyes shone with an unnatural yearning.  The immense scope of her desires suddenly brought a smile to his lips that he checked in time.  He had remembered offering his Idumeans in women’s clothing for her diversion.

Hunger for power, the next greatest hunger after hunger for love!  He felt that he stood in the presence of a desire so immense that it belittled his own hopes.  He was not too much of a Jew to have sympathy with the ambition that dwells in the breasts of women.  Cleopatra had been an evil that he had admired profoundly, because she had attained that which his own soul yearned after but which had eluded him.  Yet he was large enough not to be envious of a success.  He was made of the stuff that seekers of excitement are made of.  If he could not furnish the intoxication of activity he was a ready supporter of that one who could.

“What disorder, then, in the world,” she went on, as if she had followed a train of imagination through the triumph of the risen great man.  “Rome, the ruler of nations humbled!  Conquest from Germany to the First Cataract, from Gaul to the dry rocks of Ecbatana!  A world in anarchy, for one greater than Alexander to subjugate!  The ancient splendor of Asia, the wisdom of Africa and the virginity of Europe to be his, and the homage of the four corners of the earth to be to him!”

John said nothing.  Before him, the woman had entirely stripped off her disguise.  Now for the purpose!

At that moment one of Amaryllis’ servants, who had stood guard without the door, dodged apprehensively into the room and fled across to the opposite arch.  There he paused, ready for flight, and looked back with wide eyes.  John turned hastily but with an impatient gesture fell again to his neglected meal.  The actress looked to see what had annoyed him.  There passed in from the outer corridor a young man, tall, magnificently formed, covered with a turban and draped in quaint garments, which to her who was familiar with all the guises of the theater seemed to be Buddhistic.  He looked neither to the right nor left, but passed with a step infinitely soft and gliding across to the arch, from which the terrified servant vanished instantly.  The stranger stayed only a dramatic instant on the threshold and then disappeared into the corridor which led up into the Temple.  When he had gone the startled actress retained a picture of a face, fearless, beatified, mystic to the very edge of the supernatural.

“Who was that?” she asked of the Gischalan, who was gazing at the color of his wine, sitting in a shaft of sunlight.

“Seraiah!  But more than that, no one knows.  He appeared with the slaying of Zechariah the Just.  He haunts the garrisons.  Hence his name—­Soldier of Jehovah!”

“He did not speak; why did he come?”

“He never speaks; he goes where he will; no one would dare to stop him!”

Then suddenly realizing that he was showing disinterest the Gischalan drew himself up and smiled.