The old Idumean came a-sprawl on the ground, rolled over and sprang up with his helmet awry. The astounded young presbyter had retained his seat on the wearied camel, but gazed after the fleeing form as one who has received his death blow. “A curse upon her and all her vixen foxy Herod brood,” raged the old man, getting stiffly to his feet. “I might have known it was a trick when she said she would go to the Grecian Isles with you.” The caravan moved forward again. The old Idumean was galloping furious as his Arab horse could leap in wild bounds towards the General’s tent. Just as the sunlight burst in a shield of fire over the embattled hosts, the young presbyter looked back. The old Idumean had thrown himself from his horse and stood with drawn lance across the door to the tent of the sleeping Roman General. “And because Peter erred through love in a slippery place, it gave his great heart tenderness for all who trust in flesh,” said Apollos. Then he smiled gently at his young presbyter. “The old Idumean is closer to truth though he fell hard and cursed as Peter, than this Princess, blinder in the fetters of her own wiles than the Queen Herodias, prisoner back in the Fort,” he said. “We all have to learn by errors, Onesimus, but it makes the way longer; and he who follows truth by a circling road, comes out where he began.” CHAPTER III THE SWORD AND THE SUNBURST If a woman is forced by the chain of circumstances to barter her love for power—is she justified in bartering herself to the highest bidder? That was the thought that chased through the Princess Bernice’s brain in a dizzy whirl, when she struck her horse, and bolted from the missioner’s caravan to force herself on the notice of the Roman Emperor’s son and make such bargain as she could with her own charms for coin to save herself and her brother—the King—from ruin. Had she ever known a day of freedom of choice from early girlhood, when she had been sold to one old husband to steady a tottering throne, to opening womanhood, when widowed, she had again been sold like a slave on the shambles to another aged and repugnant spouse to win alliance to strengthen that same insecure throne? And when she had fled from that second aged buyer on plea of religious vow, her name had been dirt under the feet of the very beggars on the street—a byword among the Jews and a joke among the actors of the Roman theaters in all the known world. If the world would hound her to lawlessness for refusing to bow to legalized slavery, she would accept the challenge and bid for a power that would put the world under her feet and reduce the dogs, who barked, to lick her very hands.