He had all a Roman’s reverence for antiquity, and the thought that the smoke of the daily sacrifice had ascended from this temple for the space of more than a thousand years was well adapted to impress his imagination. Hallowed by the white light of the moon, the fabric rose with solemn and majestic air, the very stillness resting upon it seeming to have in it something of the divine. He was tempted almost to believe in the strange miracles said to have occurred here--above all in the permanent miracle asserted by every Jew that the dark, central shrine, curtained off from mortal view, and never trodden by human foot save once a year only, was the dwelling-place of the deity himself! A light touch upon his arm ended this reverie, and Crispus, on turning, found himself looking into the eyes of the Princess Berenice--very lovely eyes they were, too!--yet in them he fancied he could detect a light as of fear, due perhaps to the wild belief that he had come to take a clandestine view of the temple as a preliminary to the flinging of the incendiary torch. “What do you here, princess?” “Keeping watch upon you,” she said with a laugh that was not all a laugh. “It is my habit to walk at night in these courts.” Rufus at this juncture thought fit to slip quietly away, leaving the two together. Crispus thought of the circumstances in which he had last seen the princess. “Why look you so earnestly at me?” smiled Berenice, becoming conscious of a very attentive gaze on his part. “I am wondering, princess, why eyes so beautiful and gracious as yours are now could look so pitilessly upon poor Vashti.” “My love for my religion is such that it makes me cold, even cruel, to all who oppose it.” Her statement was probably true in a general sense, but Crispus doubted whether she had been moved by religious zeal in the case of Vashti. “Then you must hate me, who am likewise opposed to your religion?” “Nay, you are not an apostate. You have never known the truth.” And then, as if anxious to get away from the synagogue scene, in which she was conscious that she had not appeared to advantage in Crispus’ eyes, she pointed to the Sanctuary and said: “Do you not think it beautiful?” “’Twere wrong to think otherwise.” “Too beautiful to be wantonly destroyed,” she said significantly. “You see me without the fatal torch--as yet.” “As yet?” she repeated, with a touch of fear in her voice. “You are not--you are not letting that dream still hold a place in your thoughts?” “Whatever opposes Rome must be destroyed, even if it be a temple.”