She ignored the question. After a longer silence, he said in an altered and softened tone: "What an innocent you are! Certainly this is your first attempt! What marplot told you that such a thing as you have essayed was possible?" She put aside her plate and her cup, and turned to him. "By your leave I will retire," she said. "Not yet," he answered, smiling. "It is my duty as a Jew to help you while there is time." She settled back in her chair and looked at the cluster of plants while he talked. "Nothing so damages the beauty of a woman as trickery. No bad woman is beautiful very long. There comes a canker on her soul's beauty, in her face, that disfigures her, soon or late. Whoever you are, whatever your condition, you are lovely yet. Be beautiful; of a surety then you must be good." It was the same old hypocritical pose that the bad man assumes to cloak himself before innocence. Laodice remembered the incident in the hills. "Where," she asked coldly, "is he who was with you at Emmaus?" The pretender started a little, but the increase of alarm on his face showed that he realized next that here was a peril in this woman which he had overlooked. "Gone," he said unreadily, "gone back to Ephesus." She did not know what pain this announcement of that winsome stranger's desertion would waken in her heart. Her eyes fell; her brows lifted a little; the corners of her mouth became pathetic. The pretender, casting a sidelong glance at her, saw to his own safety that she had believed him. "He was a parasite," he sighed, "living off my bounty. But even that did not invite him when he neared the peril of this city. So he turned back. I--I do not blame him," he added with a little laugh. "Blame him?" she said quickly. "You--you do not blame him?" "No! Any place, any condition is more desirable than residence in Jerusalem at this hour." "If one seeks but to be comfortable. But here is a place for work and for achievement," she declared. "Too desperate an extreme. Nothing can be done here," he observed, shrugging his shoulders. She gazed at him with immense contempt. "That from a son of Judas Maccabaeus!" she exclaimed. He looked disconcerted. "Why not?" he urged. "It is neither rational nor practical to attempt the impossible. Jerusalem is doomed. I would but add myself to the sacrifice did I interfere between destruction and its sure prey." After a silence in which she confronted him with many emotions showing on her face, she said with infinite pity and disappointment: "O Philadelphus, you to throw greatness away!" "Where, O my mysterious genius, are my army, my engines, my subsistence, my advantage and the prize?" "What was that dowry which was stolen from me to purchase for you but these things? I brought it for this purpose. Another than myself delivered it to you; the end is achieved; what use will you make of it?"