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Updated: July 28, 2025
Amaryllis signed to the ivory chair before her. "Sit, lady," she said to Laodice. "He will come at once." The young woman dropped into the seat and gazed wistfully at her hostess. Instinctively, she knew that in this woman was no relief from the darkened life she was to lead with her husband. The Greek's face, palely lighted by a thoughtful smile, vanished in sudden darkness.
"Why, I I am Laodice, daughter to Costobarus, and thy wife!" she exclaimed, while her eyes fixed upon him the full force of her astonishment. He turned to Amaryllis. "What labyrinth is this, O my friend," he asked, "in which thou hast set my feet?" "I do not know," Amaryllis laughed suddenly. "Call the princess." Philadelphus summoned a servant and instructed her to bring his wife.
I say unto thee, master, that she whom thou hast sheltered in the cavern is thy wife, Laodice!" The Maccabee struggled up to his feet and gazed with stunned and unbelieving eyes at this wreck of his pagan servant, who went on precipitately. "Her I plotted against at the instigation of Julian of Ephesus.
But is he capable?" "He is the great-grandson of Judas Maccabaeus! That is enough! I have not seen him since the day he wedded Laodice and left her to go to Ephesus, but no man can change the blood of his fathers in him. And Philip he shall have no excuse to fail. He shall be moneyed; he shall be moneyed!"
"Thou hast hope," she said tactfully. "She hath no such beauty as thine!" "Nothing but my proofs!" Laodice broke in. "And Philadelphus is a young man." "Rejecting her only because I am fairer than she! He is no just man!" Laodice cried hotly. "Softly, child," the Greek said, smiling; "thou hast said that he is thy husband." Laodice turned away, her brain whirling with anger, fear and shame.
His lips were thin, the contour of his face angular at the jaw, the nose straight and long, his brows black and low over dark blue eyes of a fathomless depth, the forehead strongly molded, and marked with deep perpendicular lines between the eyes. He was dark, heavy-haired, young, lean, broad and of fine height even as he knelt beside her. Laodice did not note any of these things.
But he was wholly lost, the sick man would go on, rolling his head from side to side; he could not join Laodice because he had loved a woman of the wayside and could not cast out that love; he was not a Jew because he had rather linger with this strange beauty in the hills than hasten on the rescue of Jerusalem; he had not apostatized, though he was as wholly lost as if he had done so; he hated the heathen and would not be one of them.
Laodice dropped her head painfully. "This Hesper let me go then, and afterward " "He has repented of that by this time. It is not safe to try him a second time. Besides, if you must risk yourself to the protection of men, why turn from him whom you call your husband for this stranger?" The question was deft and telling. Laodice started with the suddenness of the accusation embodied in it.
Philadelphus smiled and shook his head. "And by the by," he asked, "what proof have you?" Up to that moment Laodice had burned with confident rage, feeling that, by force of the justice of her cause, she might overthrow this preposterous villainy, but at Philadelphus' question she suddenly chilled and blanched and shrank back.
The sudden recurrence to that past tragedy and the unfolding of his recognition fairly swept Laodice off her feet with shock and alarm. If he noted her feeling, he was sorry he had not succeeded in comforting her with a promise of reunion with her beloved in that other land. He took away his tremulous hand from her hair.
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