"The opportunity is so alluring," was her reply. "There's such an awful lot of rot in that history of the Jews. And hundreds of impossibilities. Here!" She seized the Bible and rapidly swept the pages. "What was I reading when you entered?" The thin leaves flew and flickered beneath her fingers. "Oh yes! Something quite too absurd in Matthew." "St. Matthew." "Mister St. Matthew, if you will. There"; she presented the book; "you read so beautifully--really you do, without flattery." "I will not read for you to mock." Her face flashed into crude anger. "Read," she commanded harshly. The vicar would have declined again, but that his eye fell on the verses she had indicated. A memory of their earlier conversation, coupled with her unnecessary vehemence, made him obey without further hesitation. It might be that here was the key to the problem of her jerky speech. His mellow voice rose like the music of a solemn bell, and the glorious words rolled majestically through the room. "_When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed_." "And immediately his leprosy was cleansed," breathed the Duchess, gripping the arms of her chair to lean forward. "Why not 'her' leprosy?" Lionel laid down the sacred volume. "It was a man who came to ask mercy of our Lord," said he, obtusely. Leah threw herself back in the chair with the pettish cry of a misunderstood child. "Oh, you fool!" Something in her voice startled him; yet he was far from gathering her meaning. "What is it?" he demanded, entirely bewildered. There was no light in her eyes now; from luminous sapphires they had become pebbles, dull orbs of lapis-lazuli. When she spoke her voice creaked and wheezed "If your Master lived to-day, I would go to Palestine!" she said, looking very directly at him. "What on earth for?" he asked blankly. "Can you not understand?" Her look was that of Medusa, and flickering lights came and went in her half-lifeless eyes. Their glare, rather than the toneless notes of her voice, made him faintly understand. The chosen passage out of St. Matthew, taken in conjunction with her earlier chatter of miracles, and her late reference to Palestine, engendered in his brain a horrible, a terrible, an impossible thought. And yet---- "What are you talking about?" he asked harshly. The cry of a soul on fire broke on his ears. "You brute, when I suffer so! Does it need words?" "Does what need words?" She dashed her hand on the open page of the Bible. "This--this!"