"Aye, the will of Apollonius, who has given his word for the safety of the house of Elkiah," replied the girl undaunted. "True, my fair one, and Apollonius will keep his word. You are in danger anywhere else than here. None are safe in Jerusalem but those who come beneath my shadow. To-morrow the soldiers will be let loose. I cannot hold them back any longer. Elkiah's house may go with the rest of the damned Jews. Apollonius' friendship is better than the sword of his soldiers, eh, is it not?" He put out his hands. This terrible threat and the hideous alternative it presented to her were too much for the girl to take in at once. She sank at the monster's feet. "Ah, my sweet one, don't do that. No slave shall you be to me; but I will give you as many jewels as--as the fair Clarissa, the Queen of the Grove of Daphne, wears. And I swear by your bright eyes, you shall outshine the very goddesses of Antiochus' palace." He stooped and touched her. Then she quivered as if stung by a scorpion. "Mercy, sir! Mercy for the house of Elkiah! An old man, a blind child, a wretched girl,--these are not enemies for the great Apollonius to crush. Brave men would despise him for harming such." "Humph!" grunted the Governor, "and they would despise me more for letting such a splendid woman as you go to another,--even to Dion." At this word Deborah leaped to her feet. Apollonius held out his arms to her, but recoiled as he saw her whole frame the impersonation of hatred and rage. He would as soon have ventured to grasp a sheet of flame. Then his face hardened. Fixing upon her a pair of cold, steely eyes, he assumed the pose of a bargainer. Had each word been a knife-cut severing a piece of her flesh for the weighing scale, he could not have more cruelly tortured her. "I have heard that the daughters of Jewry are of such filial devotion that they will give their lives for their sires. Will this one not give Apollonius her friendship for her father's life?" Deborah stood like a statue. The flush faded from her face as if her soul had fled. She forgot for the moment the scene and the man before her. She was with her father. She saw his face so white, with blood on his beard. She imagined him led out to death; thrust over the city walls; prodded with spear; tortured on the rack; having the tongue torn from his mouth,--for such things had recently been done in Jerusalem. The cry came from her lips: "Give me my father's life!" "Aye, and thine with it, sweet maiden," cried Apollonius, imagining that his prey was yielding to his importunities. But he was quickly undeceived. Deborah's whole form seemed to expand. In the wine-dimmed eyes of her captor she was transformed from a helpless girl into the most queenly of women, whose dignity awed him; then into some avenging deity; a divine apparition of purity which had come to scourge him for his lifetime of lust and cruelty.