The City of Delight

"Here," she said rapidly, "is what strengthens John in his folly. This

is a passage that leads under the Temple through Moriah into Tophet.

The whole city is underlaid with these galleries, but this is the only

one which leads to safety."

She dropped the curtain and approached him.

"But thou canst not go out of that passage alone!"

He smiled, and then with that boyish impulsiveness that he had

cultivated to cover the evil in his nature, he thrust out his hand to

her.

"Here is my hand on it!" he exclaimed.

"Go, then, and cease not till you have found her. Then, by any or all

the gods, I shall see that you do not go out of that passage

empty-handed."

He smiled at her radiantly and went at once to his chambers.

When he reached the apartments, he found them silent and deserted. He

seized upon the opportunity as most propitious for a search for the

possible hiding-place of the dowry of two hundred talents.

When he opened first the great press in which his lady kept her

raiment he was confronted by emptiness. Dismayed, he turned to look

into the room and found the chests for the most part open and rifled.

On the brazier, now cold, lay a wax tablet. He snatched it up and read: Received of Julian of Ephesus the appended salvage in good repair.

Items: One wife, Two hundred talents.

JOHN, KING OF JERUSALEM.

He went back to the andronitis of Amaryllis.

"I have lost interest in the treasure," he said whimsically. "But I'll

go out and look for the girl. I--I should like to discover of a truth

if the passage leads out of Jerusalem."

Amaryllis closed her lips firmly. Philadelphus read in the look that

he could not escape without Laodice.

Without further speech, he went to the vestibule, took his cloak and

kerchief from the porter and went out into the city.

It was nearly midnight when he passed into the streets. The tumult of

assault on the walls had ceased. The long lines of beacon-fires on the

walls showed only a few men in arms posted there. Without there came

no sound of activity in the camp of the Roman. The streets below,

lighted up by the ever-burning beacons, showed its usual restless

tramping of houseless, hungry ones. But there was no talk; each one

who walked the passages went wrapped in his own dismal thoughts; the

thousands took no notice of one another. Jerusalem was as silent as a

city stricken with plague.

From the summit of Zion, which Philadelphus mounted, he could see

three Roman war-towers, planted along the outer works, dimly lighted,

and manned by a vigilant garrison of legionaries. These had been a

dread and a destruction which the Jews had been unable to overthrow;

coigns of vantage from which the enemy had been able to deal the

sturdiest blows of the campaign. They had permitted no rest to the

defenders on the wall; they had spread ruin by fire and carnage, by

arrow and sling for days. Sorties against them had resulted in the

death of their assailants, only. Jewish engines accomplished nothing

against them. The three, alone, were taking Jerusalem.