“It is not for myself,” she protested earnestly, “but for the world.  Is there not a King to come to Israel?”

“There is, but not yet, my daughter.  Of that day and hour no man knoweth.  Now is Daniel’s abomination of desolation; the generation passeth and the prophecy is fulfilled.  Jerusalem is perishing.”

Seeing the wave of panic sweep over her, he put out a soothing hand.

“Yet, do not fear.  For such as you the Redeemer died; for your kind the Kingdom of Heaven is built, and the King whom the earth did not receive is for ever Lord of it.”

The veiled reference to the tragedy which Philadelphus had recounted stood out with more prominence than the promise in his words.

“Whom the earth did not receive?” she repeated.  “O prophet, as thou boasteth truthful lips and a hoary head, tell me what hath befallen us.”

“Hear it not as a calamity,” he said reassuringly.  “Thou canst make it of all things the most profitable, if thou wilt.  Forget the city.  I, who would forget it but can not, bid thee do this.  Behold, there is another Jerusalem which shall not fall.  Look to that and be not afraid.”

Her lips, parted to protest against the vague answer, closed at the final sentence and the Christian pressed his advantage.

“Of that Jerusalem there is no like on earth.  Against its walls no enemy ever comes; neither warfare nor hunger nor thirst nor suffering nor death.  This which David builded is a poor city, a humble city compared to that New Jerusalem.  There the King is already come; there the citizens are at peace and in love with one another.  There thou shalt have all that thy heart yearneth after, and all that thy heart yearneth after shall be right.”

In that city would it be right that she love Hesper instead of Philadelphus, and that she should have her lover instead of her lawful husband?

While she turned these things over in her mind, he wisely went on with his story.  Shrewdly sensing the young woman’s anxiety, the old Christian guessed the interest to her of the Messiah’s history before His teaching and began with prophecy to support the authenticity of the wonderful Galilean’s claim to divinity.  It was no fisherman or weaver of tent-cloth who brought forth the declarations of the comforter of Hezekiah, the captive prophet and the priest in the land of the Chaldeans.  His was no barbarous manner or slipshod tongue of the market-place and the wheat-fields, but the polish and the clean-cut flawless language of the synagogues and the colleges.  Laodice saw in the gesture and phrase the refinement of her father, Costobarus, of the gentlest Judean blood.

“I saw Him,” he went on in a low voice.

Laodice with her intent gaze on the beatified face put her hand to her heart.

“Forty years ago,” the old voice continued, “I saw Him first in Galilee.  There He was disbelieved and cast out.  He came then unto Jerusalem and I saw Him there heal lepers, cast out evil spirits, cure the blind and the sick and the palsied.  And in the house of Jairus and at Nain, I saw Him raise the dead.