The City of Delight

Laodice was confused by this sudden offer of help from a stranger in

whom her confidence was not entirely settled. Nevertheless a warmth

and pleasure crept into her heart benumbed with sorrow. She did not

look at Momus, fearing instinctively that the command in her old

servant's eyes would not be of a kind with the grateful response she

meant to give this stranger.

"I have no right to expect so much--from a stranger," she said.

"Then I shall not be a stranger," he declared promptly. "Call

me--Hesper--of Ephesus."

"Ephesus!" she echoed, looking up quickly.

"The maddest city in the world," he replied. "Dost know it?"

She hesitated. Could she say with entire truth that she did not know

Ephesus? Had she not read those letters that Philadelphus had written

to her father, which were glowing with praise of the proud city of

Diana? Was it not as if she had seen the Odeum and the great Theater,

the Temple with its golden cows, the mount and the plain and the broad

wandering of the Rivers Hermus, Caÿster and Maenander? Had she not

made maps of it from her young husband's accounts and then with

enthusiasm traced his steps by its stony, hilly streets from forum to

stadium and from school to museum? Had she not dreamed of its shallow

port, its rugged highways and its skyey marshes? It had been her pride

to know Ephesus, although she had never laid eyes upon it. Even she

had come to believe that she would know an Ephesian by his aggressive

joy in life! It went hard with her to deny that she knew that city

which she had all but seen.

The Maccabee observed her hesitation and when she looked up to answer,

his eyes full of question were resting upon her.

"I do not know Ephesus," she said quickly. "Are--are you a native?"

"No."

She wanted mightily to know if he had met the young Philadelphus in

that city, but she feared to ask further lest she betray him.

"A great city," he went on, "but there are greater pagan cities. It is

not like Jerusalem, which has no counterpart in the world. Even the

most intolerant pagan is curious about Jerusalem."

She looked again at his face. It was not Greek or Roman, neither more

indicative of her own blood.

"Are you a Jew?" she asked.

He remembered that she had seen him in a synagogue.

"I was," he said after a silence.

She looked at him a moment before she made comment.

"I never heard a Jew say it that way before."

He acknowledged the rebuke with the flash of a smile that appeared

only in his eyes.

"A Jew entirely Jewish wears the mark on him. You have had to ask if I

were a Jew. Would I be consistent to claim to be that which in no wise

shows to be in me?"