“By the swagger of the Gad I knew he said:  ’Dost gall thee, in truth?  Then truly, alack!  Withhold thy hand until the city comes out against thee, so thou canst hush thy conscience saying that they began it!’

“Saith the Darling, ’But there be babes and innocent men and women within those walls, who, deserving most of all, shall suffer the greatest!’

“‘By Hecate!’ quoth the Gad, ’there is not a yearling within that city possessing the power to pucker its lips but would spit upon thee!’

“‘It would be sacred innocence!’ declares Titus.

“‘Or an old man that would not burn thine ears with malediction!’

“‘That would be holy dotage!’

“‘Or a fine young man but would pale thee on a pike!’

“’Then let some one whom they hate less venomously, beseech them to their own salvation,’ implores the Darling.

“Whereupon the Gad beckons insinuatingly to Josephus.

“‘Josephus,’ says he, ’let us, being more lovable men than Titus, go up unto these walls and give the Jews a chance to be kind.’

“Josephus turns pale, but Nicanor rides upon Jerusalem.  And at that what should a miscreant Jew do but string an arrow and plunge it nicely, like a bodkin in a pincushion, in the fat shoulder of the Gad!  Alas!  It was the ruin of the Holy City!  When Titus, pale with concern, reaches his friend kicking on the ground, does the Gad curse the Jews and inveigh against the hardy walls that contain them?  Not he!  He struggles about so that he may look into the eyes of Titus and commands him to make war on them instantly under pain of the accusation of partiality to them against his friends!  And behold, war is declared.  I, with mine own eyes, saw siege laid effectively about our unhappy city!”

She gazed at him with alarmed, angry, accusing eyes.

“And yet you do nothing!” she said to him.

He smiled and let his lazy glance slip over her, but he made no response.

“O Philadelphus,” she said to him, “how you affront opportunity!”

“There are more captivating things than such opportunity.  I have known from the beginning that there was nothing here.”

She looked at him with unquiet eyes.  Why, then, had he written so confidently to her father, if he had not believed in the hope for Judea?

“From the beginning?” she repeated with inquiry.  “You wrote my father from Caesarea—­”

“Your father?” he repeated, smiling with insinuation.

“My father!”

“Who is your father?” he asked.

She turned away from him and walked to the other end of the garden.  He had never meant to aspire to the Judean throne!  He had simply written so determinedly to Costobarus, that the merchant of Ascalon would have no hesitancy in giving him two hundred talents!  In these past days, she had learned enough that was blameworthy in this Philadelphus to make him more than despicable in her eyes.  Again, as hourly since the last interview in the depression in the hills beyond the well, the fine bigness of that lovable companion of his, that had vanished for all time from her life, rose in radiant contrast.  She turned back to her husband, with the pallor of longing and homesickness in her face.