The conqueror did not answer at once. He was turning over that request in his shrewd soldier mind. He smiled slowly as a man might smile at a child playing with a sharp sword which he had snatched from its hand. “And it was for that you risked your life, child?” He laughed; and then his face saddened. He did not see the hidden appeal of the dark eyes gazing into his, though the young Trajan laughed brusquely and King Agrippa turned his reddening face away. “It is not mine to grant your request. Rome glories not in the blood of any race. My father did not covet the Imperial throne; nor do I. I covet only peace and rest. We have chosen seven hundred of the fairest Jews to grace the triumph; and they shall not walk in chains. They fought too well. They shall all ride in the chariots of the pageants; but my father, the Emperor, and I shall walk humbly on foot divested of all war harness and make thank offering to the gods of peace rather than victory. Such humble rôle would suit not you, my little Princess; but Rome never forgets even a will to service. I’ll appoint your brother and sister Drusilla a royal villa with dower by the sea at Naples; and there if the gods favor me, and my young officers do not carry you off, I shall see you sometimes, Princess.” He strode quickly away. The Princess and her brother Agrippa stood by the turret window. Was it for this she had risked her life? She had reached Titus and grasped the prize, and found it turn in her hands to Apples of Sodom and the salt tears of the Dead Sea. She had thrown love to the discard and was being told to play the wanton with underlings, whom her Herod pride scorned. She, the daughter of high priests, back to Aaron, was to eat the crumbs from Rome’s table, like the lapdogs, pets to be fondled, abused, discarded—and then the grave! And for this, she had rejected the children of love in the garden called Paradise; the wine of life drawn from a lover’s lips; the laughing glad voice of many waters from the River of Life; the golden light that was love—her spirit fell as it had fallen in her delirious sleep; and she broke in a storm of weeping in the arms of her weak brother, no longer King. Less than ten years saw Titus ascend that Imperial throne for which he cared nought; but the very year he ascended the throne came another flood of flame in fiery river down Vesuvius mountain burying the fair villas of Naples Bay, and beneath that flood of death, unknown and unfound, perished the last of the Herod line. CHAPTER IV NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES _The Dancing Girls from the Temples of Daphne_ Draw the upper horizontal line of a square and the lower vertical right hand line! The two sides of this square represented the Great Roman Road between East and West in the days following the Prophet, whom the Greeks called “Christus—the Anointed” and the Hebrews called “Jesus or Joshua—Salvation of God.”