The City of Delight

She gazed at him with alarmed, angry, accusing eyes.

"And yet you do nothing!" she said to him.

He smiled and let his lazy glance slip over her, but he made no

response.

"O Philadelphus," she said to him, "how you affront opportunity!"

"There are more captivating things than such opportunity. I have known

from the beginning that there was nothing here."

She looked at him with unquiet eyes. Why, then, had he written so

confidently to her father, if he had not believed in the hope for

Judea?

"From the beginning?" she repeated with inquiry. "You wrote my father

from Cæsarea--"

"Your father?" he repeated, smiling with insinuation.

"My father!"

"Who is your father?" he asked.

She turned away from him and walked to the other end of the garden. He

had never meant to aspire to the Judean throne! He had simply written

so determinedly to Costobarus, that the merchant of Ascalon would have

no hesitancy in giving him two hundred talents! In these past days,

she had learned enough that was blameworthy in this Philadelphus to

make him more than despicable in her eyes. Again, as hourly since the

last interview in the depression in the hills beyond the well, the

fine bigness of that lovable companion of his, that had vanished for

all time from her life, rose in radiant contrast. She turned back to

her husband, with the pallor of longing and homesickness in her face.

"Does this other woman see no fault in this, your idleness?" she

demanded.

"She! By the Shades, she sees nothing in me but fault! I would get me

up like a sane man and go out of this mad place, but she hath locked

up her dowry away from me, which was the simple cause that invited me

to join her, and bids me go without her. And I might--but for one

other attraction, dearer than the treasure, which also I would take

with me."

"Even if she forces you into deeds, I shall forgive her," she declared

at last.

He smiled a baffling smile and she looked at him in despair. The very

charm of his personal appearance awakened resentment in her; his deft

and easy complaisance angered her because it could be effective. She

hated the superficial excellence in him which made him a pleasant

companion. He had refused to discuss her identity further, except to

prevent her in her own attempts to identify herself. He did not refer

to the incidents of their journey to Jerusalem, but she felt that he

was conscious of all these things, and her resentment was so great

that she put it out of sight, lest at the time when she should be

proved she would have come to hate him to the further thwarting of

their work for Israel.