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The City of Delight

Page 72

"Even so. But of your creature comforts. My house is open to your

chief enemy. It must be so. You must be hidden--not concealed, but

disguised. You know my weakness for people of charm and people of

ability. My house is full of them. The master of this place is

indulgent; he permits me to add to my collection whatever pleases me

in the way of society. Therefore, you are come as a student of this

wonderful drama to be enacted in Jerusalem presently. You may live

under part of your name. Substitute, however, your city for your

surname. Be Philadelphus of Ephesus. No one then will question your

presence here.

"I have bound to me by oath and by fear one hundred Idumeans who will

rise or fall with you. They are of John's own army and alienated to

you without his knowledge. Hence they are in armor and ready at any

propitious moment. This house is provisioned and equipped for siege;

everything is prepared."

"At what cost, my Amaryllis?" he asked tenderly.

She drew away from him quickly, as if his tone had touched a place of

deeper disappointment.

"That I do not remember. I am your minister; you need no other. More

than the one would be multiplying chances for betrayal."

"And what wilt thou have out of all this for thyself?" he asked.

Slowly she turned her face back to him.

"I would have it said that I made a king," she said.

There was a step in the corridor leading into the andronitis, and,

smiling, Amaryllis rose. Philadelphus got upon his feet and looked to

catch the first glimpse of the woman who was bringing him two hundred

talents.

A woman entered the hall. Behind her came a servant bearing a

shittim-wood casket.

Had Amaryllis been looking for suspicious signs, she would have

observed in the intense silence that fell, in the arrested attitude of

the pair, more than a natural embarrassment. Any one informed that

these were a pair of impostors would have seen that there was no

confusion here, but amazement, chagrin and no little fear.

Instead, Amaryllis, nothing suspecting, glanced from one set face to

the other and laughed.

"Poor children! Married fourteen years and more than strangers to each

other! I will take myself off until you recover."

She signed to the servant to follow her and passed out of the hall.

Philadelphus then put off his stony quiet and gazed wrathfully at the

woman who had entered.

Hers was a fine frame, broad and square of shoulder, tall and lank of

hip as some great tiger-cat, and splendid in its sinuosity. She had

walked with a long stride and as she dropped into the chair she

crossed her limbs so that her well-turned ankles showed and the hands

she clasped about her knees were long and strong, white and remarkably

tapering. Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was

sensuous, insolent and dazzling. Withal her presence intimated

tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered

potentialities. And she was royal! No mere upstart of an impostor

could have assumed that perfect hauteur, that patrician bearing.

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