The City of Delight

"My husband," she said.

Something had happened at the Temple. She saw the Jews at the wall

recoil from the dust of battle, rally, plunge in and disappear. From

out that presently shone now and again, then with increasing frequency

and finally in great numbers, the brass mail of Roman legionaries.

Titus' forces had scaled the wall.

From her position, she saw running toward them John of Gischala, with

his long garments whipping about him, wrapping his tall figure in live

cerements. He was disarmed and bleeding. She saw next Amaryllis, with

compassionate uplifted hands stop in his way; saw next the Gischalan

thrust her aside with a blow and the next instant disappear as if the

earth had swallowed him.

Nathan was speaking to her.

"How often, O my daughter, we recognize truth and deny it because it

does not give us our way! God put a sense of the right in us. We

transgress it oftener than we mistake it!"

The roar of the turning battle and the mob about her drowned his next

words, except, "You can not be happy in iniquity; neither blessed; but you are sure

to be afraid. Right has its own terror, but there is at least courage

in being right, against your desires."

He was talking continuously, but only at times did the wind from the

uproar sweep his fervent words to her.

"Christ had His own conflict with Himself. What had become of us had

He listened to the tempter in the wilderness, or failed to accept the

cup in the Garden of Gethsemane! How much we have the happiness of

Christ in our hands! Alas! that His should be a sorrowful countenance

in Heaven!

"The love of a man for a woman was near to the Master's heart! How can

you feel that you must love and be loved in spite of Him! Pity

yourself all you may you can not then be pitied so much as He pities

you!

"Love as long and as wilfully as you will, and then it is only a

little space. The time of the supremacy of Christ cometh surely, and

that is all eternity! Which will you do--please yourself for an hour,

or be pleased by the will of God through all time? Love is in the

hands of the Lord; you can not consign it longer than the little span

of your life to the hands of the devil."

Momus, in whose mind had passed an immense surmise, was again at her

side.

"O daughter of a noble father," his dumb gaze said, "wilt thou put

away that virtue which was born in thee and let my labor come to

naught?"

But the preaching of Nathan and the reproach of Momus were feeble,

compared to the great tumult that went on in her soul. She had seen

John of Gischala cast Amaryllis aside. Even the Greek's sympathy was

hateful to him. Yet when Laodice had first entered the house of

Amaryllis, the woman had been obliged to dismiss John from her

presence for his own welfare and the welfare of the city. Why this

change?