“No!  Any place, any condition is more desirable than residence in Jerusalem at this hour.”

“If one seeks but to be comfortable.  But here is a place for work and for achievement,” she declared.

“Too desperate an extreme.  Nothing can be done here,” he observed, shrugging his shoulders.

She gazed at him with immense contempt.

“That from a son of Judas Maccabaeus!” she exclaimed.

He looked disconcerted.

“Why not?” he urged.  “It is neither rational nor practical to attempt the impossible.  Jerusalem is doomed.  I would but add myself to the sacrifice did I interfere between destruction and its sure prey.”

After a silence in which she confronted him with many emotions showing on her face, she said with infinite pity and disappointment: 

“O Philadelphus, you to throw greatness away!”

“Where, O my mysterious genius, are my army, my engines, my subsistence, my advantage and the prize?”

“What was that dowry which was stolen from me to purchase for you but these things?  I brought it for this purpose.  Another than myself delivered it to you; the end is achieved; what use will you make of it?”

“There is no nation here for that dowry to defend, no crown for it to support.  But for this same madness which possesses my lady, the princess, I should depart this day for a safer venture, in some safer country!”

She faced him intently.

“And you will do nothing for Judea?” she asked.

“What can be done?” he asked, throwing out his hands with a careless gesture.

“Oh,” she exclaimed with a rush of passionate feeling, “that I were you!  You, with the materials for empire-building at your feet!  You, with the hour beseeching you, with a people searching for you, with a treasury filled for you, with ancient prophecy establishing you, ancient precept teaching you, and the cause of God arming you!  Philadelphus, son of a great patriot, what are you saying!  What can there be done!  Oh rather, how dare you not do!  What have you about you but the inevitable end of Judah, living contrary to God’s plan for it!  It is the conscience of Israel rising against its sin and submission!  It is the blood of David rebelling against the heathen yoke!  It is the hour foretold by Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and the Twelve, when Israel shall repent and be chastened and return to the heritage of Jacob.  Be the repairer of the breach!  Be the restorer of the paths to dwell in, my husband!  Go out and let Israel behold you!  Help them to wipe out the shame of Babylonia and Persia and Macedonia and Rome!  Make Jerusalem not only a sanctuary but a capital!  Restore the glory of David and the peace of Solomon, for those were God’s days and Judah can not prosper except as it returns to them!  Philadelphus—­”

Laodice halted abruptly in her appeal, breathless with feeling.

The amusement had gone out of his face and his expression was one of mingled discomfort and surprise at her speech.