The City of Delight

"He may find--neither fortune, nor position, nor heart awaiting him!"

she finished pointedly.

The Maccabee pulled one of his stubborn locks that had fallen over his

eyes. The smile grew less vivid.

He had no comment to make to this. Meanwhile Laodice looked at him.

"Shall--you be with--your friend in Jerusalem?" she asked.

"It depends on his wife," he retorted with a grimace.

She would be glad if this tall, comely trifler, with a voice as

musical as some grave-toned viol, were to be seen from time to time to

relieve the tedium of life with the offensive Philadelphus. This

admission instantly brought a shock to her. She had learned to study

herself in these last few days since she had become aware of the ways

of the world. Life was to be no longer a period of obedience to laws

which the Torah had laid down; it was to be a long resistance against

desirable things that she yearned for but which she dared not have.

She learned at this moment that she could be her own chief

stumbling-block, and that love, the most precious illumination in

every life, might be a destruction and a consuming fire. She looked at

this man, who lounged beside her, with a new sensation. He was

winsome, and therefore the more perilous. That smooth insulting

stranger whom this man had revealed as her husband with all his

violence and license was a humble and harmless thing compared to this

one, who had snared her by his care of her and by his charming self.

She felt a desire to cry out for Momus to take her back to the inner

chamber of the shut house in Ascalon, away from her danger to herself

and from the sight of the man who had done her no harm--yet.

She did not know how plainly all this wrote itself on her candid face.

Wise pupil of that unbridled school, the city of Diana, he could read

in that slight frown on her forehead and the pathetic curve of her

lips, that she was contented with him--that she was not glad to go on

to that husband in Jerusalem. He was near to her before she knew he

had moved.

"After all," he was saying in a low voice, "I am glad you are going to

Jerusalem. You shall not be lost from me again. Whose house shall I

ask for when I can not endure separation longer?"

She moved away from him. There was a step behind her and Laodice,

coloring shamedly, looked straight into the accusing eyes of Momus who

stood there. The stranger rose.

"I shall see you again," he said to her.

He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. The next instant he was

gone.