The City of Delight

The twilight of the cavern rarely revealed enough of the features of

her fellows to Laodice for her to identify them or for them to

identify her. She lived among them a dusky shadow among shadows. And

because of her fear that Philadelphus might be searching for her, she

stayed in the sunless crypt day by day until the Maccabee, noting with

affectionate distress that she was growing white and weak, bade her

take one of the women and venture up to the light.

There were, besides the women, two men who took no part in the

preparation for war which went on about them in the cavern day and

night. While weapons and armor were made and tramping ranks formed and

broke before the commands of the lithe dark commander of that fortress

and subdued but fierce councils took place around torches--while all

this went on, they kept back, even apart from the women, and said

nothing.

Laodice saw that they were physically unfit; that one was very old and

the other very feeble and her heart warmed again to that stern master

who saw them fed as abundantly as his most valued men. These, then,

were those Christians whom he had taken into his protection because of

the Name which had inspired a shepherd boy to save his life.

When he commanded Laodice to go up into the sunlight, he approached

the corner in which the two useless men hid and bade them, too, to go

up into the air.

"Let us have no sickness in this place," he said bluntly and turned on

his heel and left them to obey.

Laodice took one of the older women and timidly climbing the steps

from which the rubbish had been pushed away by the climbing hundreds,

went through the dusk of the passage that terminated in a brilliancy

that dazzled her. And as she walked she heard the footsteps of the two

men behind her.

Up in the chaos of fallen columns, she stood a moment with her hands

pressed over her eyes. Only little by little was she able to permit

the full blaze of the Judean sun to reach them. The uproar on

Jerusalem after the muffled silence of the underground cavern filled

her with terror, and she pressed close to the shelter of the entrance

until the woman at her side reassured her.

"It is nothing," the woman said, with a dreary patience. "It is as it

was yesterday. I come here every day. I know."

After a while Laodice looked about her. The entrance to their refuge

was about the middle of the ruin and therefore a great many paces back

from the streets, so that she did not see Jerusalem's agonies face to

face. But she saw enough to make her cold and to turn her shivering

and panic-stricken into the darkness of the crypt below.