Somehow that strong avowal touched the deep springs of her grief.  She knew the pleasure that her father would have felt in it.  With the greatness of his sacrifice in mind, she filled with the determination that his work should not have been in vain.

She rose and flung back the cumbrous striped mantle on her shoulders and put out her hands to the Maccabee.

“Hast seen these pilgrims going to the Passover?” she exclaimed, with color rising as her emotion grew.  “All day they have passed; army after army of Jews, not only strong, but filled with the spirit that makes men die for a cause!  Hast seen Judea, which was once the land of milk and honey?  Wasted! a sight to make Jews gnash their teeth and die of hate and rage!  What hast thou said of Jerusalem?  ’The perfection of beauty and the joy of the whole earth!’ threatened with this same blight that hath made a wilderness of Canaan!  If the hour and the circumstance and the cause will but unite us, this unweaponed host will stretch away at once in majestic orders of tens of thousands—­legions upon legions that would shame Xerxes for numbers and that first Caesar for strength.  Then—­oh, I can see that calm battle-line pass like the ocean tide over the stony Roman front, and forget as the sea forgets the pebbles that opposed it!”

She halted suddenly on the edge of tears.  The Maccabee, astonished and moved, looked at her in silence.  This, then, was what even the women of the shut chambers of Palestine expected of him—­if he freed Judea!  If such spirit prevailed over the armies of men assembling in the Holy City, what might he not achieve with their help!  The Maccabee felt confidence and enthusiasm fill his heart to the full.  He rose.

“Our blows will never weaken nor our hearts grow faint,” he said, “if we have such eloquence and such beauty to inspire us.”

She drew back a little.  His persistent happiness of mood fell cruelly on her flinching heart at that moment.  He noted her sudden relapse into dejection, with disappointment.

“Do not be sad,” he said.  “Discomforts do not last for ever.”

“It is not that,” she said in a low voice.  “I have buried beloved dead on this journey and I have surrendered all my substance to a pillager.”

There was the silence of arrested thought.  The Maccabee was taken aback and embarrassed.  He felt that he was an intruder.  But even the flush on her face in restraining emotion made her loveliness more than ever winsome.  He let his hand drop softly on hers.  But in the genuineness of his sympathy he was not too moved to feel that her hand warmed under his clasp.

“The difference between a fool and a blunderer,” he said contritely, “is that the blunderer is always sorry for his mistakes.  I will go.  None has a right to refuse another his hour to weep.”

He hesitated a moment, as if he would have kissed her hand.  She glanced up at him with eyes too filled with the darkness of grief for words.