The City of Delight

Julian cast a look at the sleeper and hesitated. Then he scanned the

road; he might miss Aquila. He seemed to relinquish the intent that

had risen in him, and sat down again.

After a while as his constant gaze at the passers-by led him again

toward the overflowing well, he saw there, standing in a long line,

awaiting turn to dip a vessel in the water, the old bowed servant,

with a skin in his hand. The girl was nowhere to be seen.

Julian sprang to his feet and, hastening across the road, considerably

below the well, climbed the hill in the direction in which he had seen

the girl disappear.

That watchful alarm in the brain which, at moments of demand, is

instantly alive in certain sleepers, aroused the Maccabee almost as

soon as the stealthy, receding footsteps of Julian died away. He

stirred, sat up and looked about him. Julian was nowhere to be seen.

Both horses were feeding a little distance away. The Maccabee sprang

up and looked toward the well. There patiently but apprehensively

waiting was old Momus. The girl was not with him. Suspicion grew vivid

in the Maccabee's brain. The tender rank grass about him showed the

print of his cousin's steps as they led away toward the road. He

followed intently. The slim marks of the well-shod feet led him across

the dust of the road up into gravel on the slope and finally eluded

him on the escarpment that soared away above him.

The Maccabee hurried to the top of the declivity to gain whatever aid

that point of vantage might offer and from that height saw below him

to the west a single nook shaped of rock and hummock and a tree out of

which rose a blue thread of smoke. He dropped down the farther slope

at a pace little short of a run.

He mounted the slight ridge that overlooked the depression in time to

see Julian of Ephesus appear over the opposite side. Within, with her

mantle laid off, her veil thrown back, the girl knelt over a bed of

coals, baking one of the Maccabee's Milesian ducks. Julian had made a

sound; the Maccabee had come silently. She looked up and saw the less

kindly man first, flashed white with terror, sprang to her feet with a

cry, and whirled to flee up the other side. There she confronted the

Maccabee with hands extended to ward off the encroachment of his

cousin. Without an instant's hesitation she flew into the Maccabee's

arms. His clasp closed around her and she shrank against him, clinging

to the folds of his tunic over his breast with hands that were

tremulous.

Her flight to him for refuge achieved an instant change in the

Maccabee. The fear of defeat, the primal hate of a rival, died in him.

All that remained was big wrath at the presumption and effrontery of

Julian of Ephesus. He had no definite memory of what followed, because

of the rush of blood in his veins, the whirl of pleasurable sensation

in his brain and the weight of a sweet frightened figure pressed to

him. The Ephesian went, leaving an impression of a most vindictive

threat in the glittering smile and the motion of his shapely hand

clenched at the victorious Maccabee. The girl drew away hastily. The

veil was over her face and through its silken meshes he saw the glow

on her cheeks and the sweep of her lowered lashes down upon that

bloom.