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Updated: June 20, 2025
All this engaged the Maccabee's interest, but he made no comment until, on occasion of his casual word in praise of the fidelity of Aquila, Julian flew into a rage and reviled the emissary until the Maccabee brought him up with a sharp word. "Enough of that!" he exclaimed. "What ails you, man?"
With each of these pretenses the Maccabee's conviction grew that the girl had something to do with the altered behavior of his cousin. And with that growing conviction, he became the more convinced that he ought to maintain an espionage of Julian. At midnight they were both tired, exasperated, moody, and determined against each other. They had not journeyed thirty furlongs.
Come all ye who would share his triumph and hear! Hear! Come ye and be fed, ye hungry; be drunken, ye thirsty; love and be loved, ye forlorn!" Laodice stiffened in the Maccabee's clasp. "Dost thou hear?" she whispered. "It may be true!" He shook his head that he had bowed upon her shoulder. "Let us go," she urged. "Perchance he has comfort for us.
Julian was intensely disgusted and disappointed. But there was still a sensation of shock on his shoulder where the Maccabee's iron hand had rested and his famous caution stood him in stead at this moment when a quarrel with such intense and executive earnestness in his companion's manner might prove disastrous.
So long as the movements of his cousin continued regular about him, he lay still, but once, when Julian approached too near, his eyes opened full in the face of the man about to lean over him. The Ephesian raised himself hastily and the Maccabee's eyes closed again. "A pest on an eye that only half sleeps!" Julian said to himself. "He hasn't lost count on the minutes since he left Cæsarea!"
Laodice, sensing something climacteric in his atmosphere, kept aloof from him, and regarded him from the dusk of her corner with wonder and a pity that she could not explain. The Christian on the other hand seemed always in an unobtrusive way to be at the Maccabee's elbow.
The Maccabee's lips were against her cheek as he continued to speak. "It is the end! There is no help for us. Love me, and let me be happy an hour before we perish! The Nazarene is right! The city is cursed! God's wrath is upon us. The hour is still ours. Love me and let us die!" Without the great voice, like an unwearying bell, was calling: "A sign! A sign! Behold the Deliverer!
Julian was nowhere to be seen. Both horses were feeding a little distance away. The Maccabee sprang up and looked toward the well. There patiently but apprehensively waiting was old Momus. The girl was not with him. Suspicion grew vivid in the Maccabee's brain. The tender rank grass about him showed the print of his cousin's steps as they led away toward the road. He followed intently.
The Maccabee dashed through the flock and rounding a turn in the road came upon Laodice walking; behind her Momus; at her side was Julian of Ephesus. Immense strain had sharpened their sense of fear until it was as acute as an instinct. Before the sound of the Maccabee's furious approach reached Julian, the Ephesian whirled.
Within this inclosure, wrapped in the coarse mantle of her servant, sat Laodice. She had raised her veil and its misty texture flowed like a web of frost over her brilliant hair and framed her face in cold vapor. In spite of the marks of grief that had exhausted her tears, the fatigue and discomfort, she seemed, to the Maccabee's eyes, more than ever lovely.
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