Not likely, indeed, he thought, would such beauty as hers go hungry as long as there were hearts in the wilderness as impressionable as his.  But the thought of another than himself providing for her did not make him happy.

There was nothing more to be said, but he did not go.  In his face gathered signs of his interest in her identity.

“Is there more that I can do for you?” he asked.  “Have you friends in Jerusalem?  I will bear your messages gladly.”

But it was a grateful privilege which she had to refuse with reluctance.  If her husband awaited her in Jerusalem, he must wait, rather than be informed of the cause of her delay at peril of exposing his presence in the city.  She shook her head.

“There is nothing more,” she added.  “I thank you.”

Dismissal was so evident in her voice that he prepared to depart.

“Shall you move on, then, in the morning?” he asked.

“We have seven days in the wilderness,” she explained.  “We can not hasten.  It is only a little way to Jerusalem.”

“But it is a long road and a weary one for tender feet,” he answered; “and it is a time of warfare and much uncertainty.”

She lifted her eyes now with trouble in them.

“Is there any less dangerous way than this?” she asked.

The Maccabee sat down and clasped his hands about his knees.  This grasping at the slightest excuse to remain exasperated the perplexed Momus, who could not understand the stranger’s assurance.  But the Maccabee failed to see him.

“There is,” he said to Laodice.  “One can journey with you.  I am under no restriction, and the rabbis do not bind you against me.  I can secure you comforts along the way, and give you protection.  There in no such dire need that I enter Jerusalem under seven days.”

Laodice was confused by this sudden offer of help from a stranger in whom her confidence was not entirely settled.  Nevertheless a warmth and pleasure crept into her heart benumbed with sorrow.  She did not look at Momus, fearing instinctively that the command in her old servant’s eyes would not be of a kind with the grateful response she meant to give this stranger.

“I have no right to expect so much—­from a stranger,” she said.

“Then I shall not be a stranger,” he declared promptly.  “Call me—­Hesper—­of Ephesus.”

“Ephesus!” she echoed, looking up quickly.

“The maddest city in the world,” he replied.  “Dost know it?”

She hesitated.  Could she say with entire truth that she did not know Ephesus?  Had she not read those letters that Philadelphus had written to her father, which were glowing with praise of the proud city of Diana?  Was it not as if she had seen the Odeum and the great Theater, the Temple with its golden cows, the mount and the plain and the broad wandering of the Rivers Hermus, Cayster and Maenander?  Had she not made maps of it from her young husband’s