Who? MARY MAGDALENE The Nazarene.... VERUS Let us not speak of that wretched man: his hours are numbered.... MARY MAGDALENE His hours are numbered?... What do you mean?... VERUS No matter: that does not interest us now and soon we shall know nothing of aught that does not touch our love; for it is wonderful to see how the thoughts of those who love each other meet and unite in spite of the distance and of the ill-natured speeches that come between them. Is it not astonishing that, after leaving you at Silanus’, where I had heard words that should have deprived me of all hope, I for the first time felt our young happiness swell and blossom in all its strength and all its certainty?... While you were calling me, I called you also with all the deep and wonderful voices of my heart. I was kept far from you by a duty unworthy of a soldier; for that expedition to Jericho, the last, I trust, upon which I shall be sent, was almost odious and often ridiculous. I counted with rage the minutes stolen from our new life, which was already beginning in a soul that feared none of my reasons for fearing.... MARY MAGDALENE It will not really begin until we are far from this land where I suffocate, where everything darkens and threatens happiness, where I can no longer live.... Verus, I beseech you, if you love me as I love you, let us hasten, let us leave everything; there is no time to lose.... VERUS You are right: a joy so long awaited must not be born among these sinister rocks, where floats an odour of death and madness.... And yet, even here, our thoughts came to an understanding long before our words.... Like you, I have resolved to leave this hated city, where really my obedience is abused.... I am at the orders of the Procurator, but not at the venomous service of the Jewish priests, nor of the clamorous and perfidious nation whom my old legionaries have conquered. I have had enough of this ambiguous life. Before to-night, I shall find a pretext for evading an order which I was to execute this very day, an order of which I but too well know the origin.... If the pretext appear insufficient, let Caiaphas and Annas go and complain to Cæsar.... Nothing counts in the presence of our love; and the inglorious errand which they claim the right to impose upon me repels me all the more inasmuch as it was to be accomplished, so to speak, before your eyes.... MARY MAGDALENE Before my eyes?... Of what are you speaking?... VERUS Nothing that interests you; let us think only of our happy escape.... MARY MAGDALENE I know that some danger threatens him.... VERUS Whom do you mean?... MARY MAGDALENE It is impossible, after what he has done, that you should become the instrument of his worst enemies.... You owe him my life and perhaps our happiness.... What do they want with him? What orders have you received?... VERUS