"Fie! Fie!" the athlete put in comfortably. "Let us make a truce, for I announce to you the opportunity each to have whatever you wish. We are to have at the proper moment, according to the Jews, a celestial visitation which will enable us to have what we most desire." "You announce it!" the girl scoffed indignantly. "I have heard of that ever since I was born!" "I, too, have heard it," said Juventius. "Well," said the unabashed athlete, "the Pharisee that brings Amaryllis her fruit is so full of it that he gets prophecies mixed with his prices and the patriarchs with his fruit. He says that there are those that declare he is already in the city." "That he has been seen?" Juventius asked, after a little silence. "No; merely suspected. They say that things go on in the Temple which seem to show that some resident of their Olympus already inhabits the air." "I saw Seraiah to-day," one of the women said in a low voice. "Silent as ever? Spotless as ever? Mysterious as ever?" the athlete asked. The woman who had spoken shook her head at him as if alarmed. "I can not bear to hear him ridiculed," she said. "Somehow it seems blasphemous. They say he marks every one who laughs in his hearing." "They are not many," the girl said. "For the most part, the citizens of Jerusalem feel as apprehensive about him as you do." "I wonder that John will stay in the Temple with a god in it," Juventius said, as if he had not heard the rest of the discussion. "John!" the athlete exclaimed. "John is an adventurer that believes in nothing, has no cause and furthers this warfare for loot and the possible chance of escape when the conflict comes." "Simon is different," another said. "Now he is wild and mad and insolent and foolhardy, because he believes that, no matter what tangle the situation is in, the celestial emissary he expects will straighten it out for him." "In short, he means to work such a complexity here that the man who unravels it must needs be divine." At this moment the door that cut off the rest of the house from this dining-room opened smartly and the supposed Philadelphus stepped in. He closed the door behind him and glanced at the filled table. Those there seated rose. He spoke to each one by name, and after they had greeted him, they filed out into the court and the servants began to remove the remnants of their meal. Laodice rose at sign of this concerted deference to Philadelphus but sat down again, with her lips compressed. However they had disposed her, she would not accept the menial attitude. She had not finished her honey-cakes. He came round to her, drew up a chair and sat down beside her. She ignored him, making a feint that was not entirely successful at interest in her fruit. "Who art thou, in truth?" he asked finally. "Laodice," she answered coldly. He sighed and she added nothing more. "What can your purpose be in this?" he asked.