“Gathered and burned.”

“Even so.  But of your creature comforts.  My house is open to your chief enemy.  It must be so.  You must be hidden—­not concealed, but disguised.  You know my weakness for people of charm and people of ability.  My house is full of them.  The master of this place is indulgent; he permits me to add to my collection whatever pleases me in the way of society.  Therefore, you are come as a student of this wonderful drama to be enacted in Jerusalem presently.  You may live under part of your name.  Substitute, however, your city for your surname.  Be Philadelphus of Ephesus.  No one then will question your presence here.

“I have bound to me by oath and by fear one hundred Idumeans who will rise or fall with you.  They are of John’s own army and alienated to you without his knowledge.  Hence they are in armor and ready at any propitious moment.  This house is provisioned and equipped for siege; everything is prepared.”

“At what cost, my Amaryllis?” he asked tenderly.

She drew away from him quickly, as if his tone had touched a place of deeper disappointment.

“That I do not remember.  I am your minister; you need no other.  More than the one would be multiplying chances for betrayal.”

“And what wilt thou have out of all this for thyself?” he asked.

Slowly she turned her face back to him.

“I would have it said that I made a king,” she said.

There was a step in the corridor leading into the andronitis, and, smiling, Amaryllis rose.  Philadelphus got upon his feet and looked to catch the first glimpse of the woman who was bringing him two hundred talents.

A woman entered the hall.  Behind her came a servant bearing a shittim-wood casket.

Had Amaryllis been looking for suspicious signs, she would have observed in the intense silence that fell, in the arrested attitude of the pair, more than a natural embarrassment.  Any one informed that these were a pair of impostors would have seen that there was no confusion here, but amazement, chagrin and no little fear.

Instead, Amaryllis, nothing suspecting, glanced from one set face to the other and laughed.

“Poor children!  Married fourteen years and more than strangers to each other!  I will take myself off until you recover.”

She signed to the servant to follow her and passed out of the hall.

Philadelphus then put off his stony quiet and gazed wrathfully at the woman who had entered.

Hers was a fine frame, broad and square of shoulder, tall and lank of hip as some great tiger-cat, and splendid in its sinuosity.  She had walked with a long stride and as she dropped into the chair she crossed her limbs so that her well-turned ankles showed and the hands she clasped about her knees were long and strong, white and remarkably tapering.  Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was sensuous, insolent and dazzling.  Withal her presence intimated tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered potentialities.  And she was royal!  No mere upstart of an impostor could have assumed that perfect hauteur, that patrician bearing.