“In short, he means to work such a complexity here that the man who unravels it must needs be divine.”

At this moment the door that cut off the rest of the house from this dining-room opened smartly and the supposed Philadelphus stepped in.  He closed the door behind him and glanced at the filled table.  Those there seated rose.  He spoke to each one by name, and after they had greeted him, they filed out into the court and the servants began to remove the remnants of their meal.  Laodice rose at sign of this concerted deference to Philadelphus but sat down again, with her lips compressed.  However they had disposed her, she would not accept the menial attitude.  She had not finished her honey-cakes.

He came round to her, drew up a chair and sat down beside her.  She ignored him, making a feint that was not entirely successful at interest in her fruit.

“Who art thou, in truth?” he asked finally.

“Laodice,” she answered coldly.

He sighed and she added nothing more.

“What can your purpose be in this?” he asked.

She ignored the question.  After a longer silence, he said in an altered and softened tone: 

“What an innocent you are!  Certainly this is your first attempt!  What marplot told you that such a thing as you have essayed was possible?”

She put aside her plate and her cup, and turned to him.

“By your leave I will retire,” she said.

“Not yet,” he answered, smiling.  “It is my duty as a Jew to help you while there is time.”

She settled back in her chair and looked at the cluster of plants while he talked.

“Nothing so damages the beauty of a woman as trickery.  No bad woman is beautiful very long.  There comes a canker on her soul’s beauty, in her face, that disfigures her, soon or late.  Whoever you are, whatever your condition, you are lovely yet.  Be beautiful; of a surety then you must be good.”

It was the same old hypocritical pose that the bad man assumes to cloak himself before innocence.  Laodice remembered the incident in the hills.

“Where,” she asked coldly, “is he who was with you at Emmaus?”

The pretender started a little, but the increase of alarm on his face showed that he realized next that here was a peril in this woman which he had overlooked.

“Gone,” he said unreadily, “gone back to Ephesus.”

She did not know what pain this announcement of that winsome stranger’s desertion would waken in her heart.  Her eyes fell; her brows lifted a little; the corners of her mouth became pathetic.  The pretender, casting a sidelong glance at her, saw to his own safety that she had believed him.

“He was a parasite,” he sighed, “living off my bounty.  But even that did not invite him when he neared the peril of this city.  So he turned back.  I—­I do not blame him,” he added with a little laugh.

“Blame him?” she said quickly.  “You—­you do not blame him?”