"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. But the pretended Philadelphus was not impressed by this beauty. "How now, Salome?" he demanded. "What play is this?" The Ephesian actress motioned toward the shittim-wood casket. "For that," she said calmly. Her voice became, instantly, her foremost charm. It was a deep voice; the profoundest contralto with an illimitable strength in suggestion. "Where is--what is that?" "Two hundred talents." Philadelphus took a step toward her. "What!" he exclaimed evilly. "Whose two hundred talents?" "Mine." There was silence in which the man's fingers bent, as if he felt her throat between them. Then he recovered himself. "But--this woman--where is she?" The actress lifted her shapely shoulders. "Where is the Maccabee?" she asked in return. He made no answer. "Did you get that treasure here--since yesterday?" he asked at last querulously. "No, by Pluto! I got it in the hills near to Emmaus. You would have had it in another day." She laughed impudently, in spite of the murderous blackening in his face. "Then, since you are such a shrewd thief, why did you come here at all, since you had the gold?" he demanded, astonished in spite of his rage. She waved a pair of jeweled hands. "They said that the Maccabee was strong and ambitious and forceful, that he would be king over Judea. Knowing you, I believed he would still come to Jerusalem in spite of you. How did you do it? In his sleep? Now, I," she continued with an assumption of concern, "failed in that detail. She was guarded by a monster. I could not get near her. But I got the casket." "She will come here then!" Philadelphus exclaimed. "What of it! Amaryllis does not know her; no one else does. And I have her proofs--and her dowry!" After a silence in which she read the expression on his face, she rose and came near him with determination in her manner. "You will have the wisdom not to recognize her," she said, "lest I suddenly discover that you are not the Philadelphus I expected." He made rapid survey of her advantage over him, and submitted.