“O Christ, why should I resist Thee!” he groaned.  “Thou hast stripped me and made me see that my loss is good!”

The Christian laid his hands on the Maccabee’s head.

“Dost thou believe?” he asked.

“Will Christ accept me, coming because I must?”

“It is not laid down how we shall baptize in the thirst of a famine,” Nathan said, “yet He who sees fit to deny water never yet hath denied grace.”

But the Christian’s hand extended over the kneeling man was caught in a grip steadied with intense emotion.  The unknown had seized him.

But for his feeling that this interruption was necessary to the welfare of another soul, the Christian would not have paused in his ministry.

The phantom straightened himself with a superb reinvestment of manhood.

“Thou, son of the Maccabee, Philadelphus!” he exclaimed to the kneeling man.

The Ephesian’s arms sank.

“Who art thou that knoweth me?” he asked in a dead voice.

“I am all that plague and sin hath left of thy servant Aquila,” the phantom declared.

The Maccabee lifted his face for what should follow this revelation.  It was only a manifestation of his subjection to another will than his own.  He was not interested—­he who was hoping to die.

“Hear me, and curse me!” Aquila went on.  “But save thy wife yet.  I say unto thee, master, that she whom thou hast sheltered in the cavern is thy wife, Laodice!”

The Maccabee struggled up to his feet and gazed with stunned and unbelieving eyes at this wreck of his pagan servant, who went on precipitately.

“Her I plotted against at the instigation of Julian of Ephesus.  Her, my mistress, Salome the Cyprian, robbed and hath impersonated thus long to her safety in the house of the Greek.  This hour, through ignorance of thine own identity, through my fault, she hath gone reluctantly to his arms.  Curse me and let me die!”

The Maccabee seized the hair at his temples.  For a moment the awful gaze he bent upon Aquila seemed to show that the gentler spirit had been dislodged from his heart.  Then he cried: 

“God help us both, Aquila!  My fault was greater than thine!”

He turned and fled toward the house of the Greek.

The four legions of Titus swept after him.

Aquila lifted his eyes for the first time and gazed at Nathan.

“I cursed thee for sparing me to such an existence as was mine! 
Behold, father, thou didst bless me, instead.  I am ready to die.”

“Wait,” the Christian said peacefully.

A moment later, the Maccabee dashed into the andronitis of Amaryllis.

After him sprang a terrified servant crying: 

“The Roman!  The Roman is upon us!”

A roar of such magnitude that it penetrated the stone walls of Amaryllis’ house, swept in after the servant.  Quaking menials began to pour into the hall.  Among them came the blue-eyed girl, the athlete and Juventius the Swan.  These three joined their mistress who stood under a hanging lamp.  Into the passage from the court, left open by the frightened servants, swept the prolonged outcry of perishing Jerusalem.  Over it all thundered the boom of the siege-engines shaking the earth.