It was as if all the evils of all past ages in all past cycles of time crashed down in one vibrant shock that shook the world; as if the iron bands of law and order and empire forged in the furnaces of that Ancient of Days—had burst asunder; as though a great Tidal Wave from Eternity had submerged another Atlantis and thrown up in the wreckage on the Shores of Timeless Eternity another race, another age, another order. The terrible cry, that ascended to Heaven, was the cry of a Dying World. The Kingdom of the Herod line for which she had risked her life and sacrificed her love was crumbling to dust and ashes under her eyes. The Old had passed away for the New; and Fate had rejected her pawn. Came the iron-shod trample of soldiers running up the stone stairs of the Herod Tower, and King Agrippa broke into the room followed by Titus, the emperor’s son, and Trajan, the youthful lieutenant, all faces blackened with the smoke of battle. “You are safe here, my Sister,” cried the last ruler of the Herod line. “The fire cannot touch these Towers. All the city but these Herod Towers will be laid flat as plain by morning.” “And where,” demanded Titus, “is the Princess page, who risked her life running through the Aqueduct this morning to do Rome service?” And Titus was not such a figure as her dreams of power had painted. He was a plain, short, thickset soldier, with keener eye for spear than woman’s guiles. Then she stood erect and proud as Herod the Great had stood before the Roman Senate many long years ago. The daughter of high priest and King, she would meet Fate face to face. “Small chance I had to do Rome service, my Lord,” she said. “Your brave legions captured the prize before I could add my woman help.” “But when my soldiers guessed that the woman who had broken through the ranks in the morning to enter my tent was the page boy first to enter the hole in the wall to the Temple court, they swore they would take the city to-night, or perish to a man. Think you my Romans would be less men than a weak little Princess?” That word “weak” with its commiseration of male strength for child woman smote her hopes in the face like an iron gauntlet. She had played an ancient game with an ancient pawn—and lost, as Eve lost in an ancient garden; and she knew now what brought defeat to woman; and she knew now if she had answered the true urge of her heart, how she could have turned defeat to victory and wielded greater power with unseen hands than all Rome’s strength. Man could slay, but only woman could give life. “You were the wine to my men’s flagging courage, my little Princess,” he said. “What reward do you claim?” “My Lord,” she said, hiding her defeat in his chivalry, “when the chariots enter the Triumphal Arch at Rome, the last of the Herod line would not pace behind in captive chains. Let them perish rather. They would ride with the conqueror.”