At a word from one of the men, the other alighted and, peering from the shelter of a prostrate cedar, inspected the pair.  After assuring himself that there were but two about the camp, one a woman and both asleep, he tiptoed back to his fellow.

“Only a man and a woman,” he said.  “Jews on their way to the Passover.  Their fire is almost out.  Let us ride on.”

“What haste!” the one who had kept his saddle said.  “One would think it were you going forward to meet a bride and her dowry!  I am hungry.  Let us borrow of this fire and get breakfast.”

“Emmaus is only a little farther on,” the first man protested.  “I am tired of wayside meals, Philadelphus.  I would eat at a khan again before I forget the custom.”

“How is the pair favored?” the other said provokingly.

“I did not approach near enough,” the other retorted.  “It seemed to be an old man and a girl.”

“Pretty?” the one called Philadelphus asked.

“I did not see.”

“Married, Julian?”

“How could I tell?” Julian flared.

Philadelphus laughed, and dismounted.

“I shall see for myself,” he declared, walking over to the sheltering cedar to look.

Julian followed him nervously, saying under his breath: 

“You waste time deliberately!”

“Tut!  You merely wish to keep me from seeing this girl,” Philadelphus retorted.

He, too, stopped at the prostrate cedar and gazed under the sagging shelter of skins.

“Shade of Helen!” he exclaimed under his breath as the firelight gave him perfect view of the sleeping girl.  “What have we here?”

Julian made no response.  He drew nearer and looked in silence.

“Now what are they to each other?” Philadelphus continued.  “Father and daughter; lady and servant or—­a courtezan and her manager?”

At the continued silence of his companion, he argued his question himself.

“No such ill-fashioned peasant loins as his ever begat such sweet patrician perfection as that!” he declared.  “And a lady rich enough to have one servant would travel with more than one or not at all—­”

Julian broke in with sudden avid interest.

“Look at that deal of feminine flummery—­that dress of silver tissue, the ends of that silken scarf you see below the covering—­all those jewels and trinkets!  Odd garb for travel afoot, is it not?  It is a badge not to be put off even in as barren a market as this.  She is going to Jerusalem for the Passover.  He will carry the purse, however, mark me.”

“How well you know the marks of delinquency!” Philadelphus said with a glimmer of resentment in his eyes.

“Who does not?  What do the Jewish psalmists and proverbialists and purists depict so minutely as that migrating iniquity, the strange woman?”

“But look at her!” Philadelphus insisted.  “I have not seen anything so bewitching since I left Ephesus!”