Laodice was looking at her, now with enlightenment in her face.

“Philadelphus,” Amaryllis continued, following up her advantage, “is nothing more than a man and you are very lovely.”

“All this,” Laodice said, rousing, “is to persuade me to—­”

“There are two standards for women,” the Greek interposed before Laodice finished her indignant sentence.  “Yours and another’s.  As between yours, who would have love from him whom you have married, and hers, who hath love from him whom she hath not married, there is only the difference of a formula.  Between her condition and yours, she is the freer; between her soul and yours, she is the more willingly faithful.  If woman be born to a purpose, she fulfils it; if not she hath not consecrated her life to a mistake.  You overrate the importance of marriage.  It is your whole purpose to preserve yourself for a ceremony.  It is too much pains for too trivial an end.  At least, there are many things which are farther reaching and less selfish in intent.  And who, by the way, holds the longest claim on history?  Your kind or this other?  The world does not perpetuate in its chronicles the continence of women; it is too small, too personal, too common to be noted.  Cleopatra were lost among the horde of forgotten sovereigns, had she wedded duly and scorned Mark Antony; Aspasia would have been buried in a gynaeconitis had she wedded Pericles, and Sappho—­but the list is too long; I will not bury you in testimony.”

Laodice raised her head.

“You reason well,” she said.  “It never occurred to me how wickedness could justify itself by reason.  But I observe now how serviceable a thing it is.  It seems that you can reason away any truth, any fact, any ideal.  Perhaps you can banish God by reason, or defend crime by reason; reason, I shall not be surprised to learn, can make all things possible or impossible.  But—­does reason hush that strange speaking voice in you, which we Jews call conscience?  Tell me; have you reasoned till it ceases to rebuke you?”

“Ah, how hard you are to accommodate,” Amaryllis smiled.  “I mean to show you how you can abide here.  I can ask no more of John.  Philadelphus alone is master of your fate.  I have not sought to change you before I sought to change Philadelphus.  He will not change so long as you are beautiful.  This is life, my dear.  You may as well prepare for it now.”

Laodice gazed with wide, terrorized eyes at the Greek.  She saw force gathering against her.  Amaryllis shaped her device to its end.

“And if you do not accept this shelter,” she concluded, “what else is there for you?”

Hesper, many times her refuge, rose before the hard-pressed girl.

“There is another in Jerusalem who will help me,” she declared.

“And that one?” Amaryllis asked coolly.

“Is he who calls himself Hesper, the Ephesian,” Laodice answered.

“Why should you trust him?” the Greek asked pointedly.