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Lounging on an exedra was a young woman in a woolen chiton, barefoot and trifling with the Greek ampyx that bound her golden hair. Laodice put up her veil and looked with hurrying heart at her hostess. Before she could get a preliminary idea of the woman she was to meet, John spoke lightly: "Be wearied no longer.

They stood within a few paces of Laodice and she heard the soldier address the man as John, and heard him deliver a report of the day. When the soldier withdrew to his place, Laodice stepped forward and called to the Gischalan. He stopped, noted that she was beautiful and waited. "I would speak with the Lady Amaryllis," she hesitated. "Have you the countersign?" he asked.

"And you believe that I " Laodice began and stopped, bewildered. Amaryllis, smiling, moved toward the inner corridor of her house. At the threshold of the arch she called back: "Please yourself, my friend," and was gone. Laodice was, by this time, stunned and intensely repelled. The hand on which Amaryllis had laid hers in passing tingled under the touch.

But never fear; Jerusalem is not yet so far gone that it would not enjoy a pretty stranger." The curious sense of indignation that possessed Laodice was purely instinctive. Her mind could not sense the actual insult in the Greek's words. "I would advise you to be kind to Philadelphus."

A moment and they were swinging down the stony side of the hill toward the east, and Laodice, with her hand clutching her excited heart, had not thought of flinging herself upon Momus. She raised herself gradually to watch them as far as she could see, and her fixed and stunned gaze rested with immense homesickness and longing on the taller man radiant against the background of a risen sun.

"You have housed Discord under your roof, then," he said. "Laodice, the wife to this Philadelphus, will not be a happy woman; and I I shall not be a happy man. Let me return favor for your favor to me. I will take her away." She laughed, though it seemed that a hard note had entered her voice. "You will permit me, then, to surmise for myself why you came to Jerusalem.

He was angry because she had come; he hated her for her stateliness; he found himself looking for defects in her and belittling her undeniable graces. Confused and for the moment without plan, he looked at her frowning, and with cold astonishment the woman gazed back at him. "Thou art Laodice, daughter of Costobarus?" he asked, to gain time. She inclined her head.

"We are from Pella, the Christian city. We are, my sheep, my city and I, the only secure people in all Judea. We, I and the sheep, have been in the hills since the first new grass in February. We are many leagues from home." "So am I," Laodice said wearily. "Jerusalem?" the shepherd asked, glad he had brought out a response. "No? Yet all Judea is going to Jerusalem at this time.

"No; else I should have entered. But Amaryllis will know me." "Enter then," the Gischalan said. In a moment she was admitted at the solid doors and led into a vestibule. Here, a porter took charge of Momus and showed him into a side passage, while Laodice followed her conductor through a corridor into an interior hall of splendid simplicity.

Laodice saw that they were physically unfit; that one was very old and the other very feeble and her heart warmed again to that stern master who saw them fed as abundantly as his most valued men. These, then, were those Christians whom he had taken into his protection because of the Name which had inspired a shepherd boy to save his life.