"Josephus turns pale, but Nicanor rides upon Jerusalem. And at that what should a miscreant Jew do but string an arrow and plunge it nicely, like a bodkin in a pincushion, in the fat shoulder of the Gad! Alas! It was the ruin of the Holy City! When Titus, pale with concern, reaches his friend kicking on the ground, does the Gad curse the Jews and inveigh against the hardy walls that contain them? Not he! He struggles about so that he may look into the eyes of Titus and commands him to make war on them instantly under pain of the accusation of partiality to them against his friends! And behold, war is declared. I, with mine own eyes, saw siege laid effectively about our unhappy city!" She gazed at him with alarmed, angry, accusing eyes. "And yet you do nothing!" she said to him. He smiled and let his lazy glance slip over her, but he made no response. "O Philadelphus," she said to him, "how you affront opportunity!" "There are more captivating things than such opportunity. I have known from the beginning that there was nothing here." She looked at him with unquiet eyes. Why, then, had he written so confidently to her father, if he had not believed in the hope for Judea? "From the beginning?" she repeated with inquiry. "You wrote my father from Cæsarea--" "Your father?" he repeated, smiling with insinuation. "My father!" "Who is your father?" he asked. She turned away from him and walked to the other end of the garden. He had never meant to aspire to the Judean throne! He had simply written so determinedly to Costobarus, that the merchant of Ascalon would have no hesitancy in giving him two hundred talents! In these past days, she had learned enough that was blameworthy in this Philadelphus to make him more than despicable in her eyes. Again, as hourly since the last interview in the depression in the hills beyond the well, the fine bigness of that lovable companion of his, that had vanished for all time from her life, rose in radiant contrast. She turned back to her husband, with the pallor of longing and homesickness in her face. "Does this other woman see no fault in this, your idleness?" she demanded. "She! By the Shades, she sees nothing in me but fault! I would get me up like a sane man and go out of this mad place, but she hath locked up her dowry away from me, which was the simple cause that invited me to join her, and bids me go without her. And I might--but for one other attraction, dearer than the treasure, which also I would take with me." "Even if she forces you into deeds, I shall forgive her," she declared at last.