The City of Delight

Julian looked up in a startled manner and hurriedly looked away again.

A half-frightened, half-amused smile played about his lips.

"Aquila is no judge of woman," he said finally. "And furthermore, they

say she got to trifling with magic and prowling about the temples to

see if the gods came true. They were afraid she would get them blasted

along with her sometime for her sacrilege. I know all this because

Aquila declared she attached herself to him in sheer poverty in

Ephesus and swore to follow him to the ends of the earth."

The Maccabee smiled.

"Nevertheless, he told me that he was afraid of her, but that she was

a woman and in need and he could not reject her."

Julian's eyes grew insinuating.

"How much then your behavior this morning would have shocked him!" he

murmured.

The smile died on the Maccabee's face. Reference to the girl in the

hills seemed blasphemy on this man's lips.

"And you do not recall your wife's face?" Julian persisted.

The Maccabee's face hardened more. But he shook his head.

"Fourteen years can change a woman from a beauty to--a--a Christian,

ugly and old and cold," Julian augured.

The Maccabee turned his head away from his tormentor and Julian's

laughter trailed off into a half-jocular groan.

"How much you harp on beauty!" the Maccabee said deliberately. "Are

you then going to regret the actresses you left behind when I tore you

from your exalted calling as the forelegs of the elephant in the

theaters at Ephesus?"

Julian's face blackened. A foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him

at that instant. He flung himself out from his saddle and raised his

hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed

laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, dropped it, red and

contracting with pain, at his companion's side.

"Tut! Julian, you are a bad combatant. If you must make way with a

man," the Maccabee advised, "stab him in the back. It is sure--for

you. Ha! Is this Emmaus we see?"

They had ridden up a slight eminence and below them was a disorder of

fallen or decrepit Syrian huts in the hollow place in the hills.

It had been the history of Emmaus for centuries to be known. The feet

of the Crucified One had pressed its ruined streets and His devoted

chroniclers had not failed to set it down in their illuminated

gospels. Army after army in endless procession had thundered through

it since the first invader humbled the glory of Canaan, and few of the

historians had forgotten to record the unimportant incident. Warfare

had hurtled about it for centuries; the Roman army had come upon it

and would continue to come. It had not the spirit to resist; it was

not worthy of conquest. It simply stood in the path of events.