eeing that the frail one is lovely."

"I do not know that she is lovely."

"What!" Julian exclaimed in genuine amazement. "You do not know that
she is lovely! Years of correspondence with a woman whom you do not
know to be lovely! Reposing kingdoms on a woman's influence whom you
do not know to be beautiful!"

"Beauty is no tie," the Maccabee retorted. "Have you forgotten Salome,
the Jewish actress who could play Aphrodite in the theaters of
Ephesus, to the confusion of the goddess herself? They said she snared
three procurators and an emperor at one performance and lost them in a
day!"

"Have you seen her?" Julian asked with a sidelong glance. "Till your
own eyes prove it, you should not accept that she is so bewitching."

"There is no need that I should see her; Aquila swears it! And I would
take his word against the testimony of even mine own eyes."

Julian looked up in a startled manner and hurriedly looked away again.
A half-frightened, half-amused smile played about his lips.

"Aquila is no judge of woman," he said finally. "And furthermore, they
say she got to trifling with magic and prowling about the temples to
see if the gods came true. They were afraid she would get them blasted
along with her sometime for her sacrilege. I know all this because
Aquila declared she attached herself to him in sheer poverty in
Ephesus and swore to follow him to the ends of the earth."

The Maccabee smiled.

"Nevertheless, he told me that he was afraid of her, but that she was
a woman and in need and he could not reject her."

Julian's eyes grew insinuating.

"How much then your behavior this morning would have shocked him!" he
murmured.

The smile died on the Maccabee's face. Reference to the girl in the
hills seemed blasphemy on this man's lips.

"And you do not recall your wife's face?" Julian persisted.

The Maccabee's face hardened more. But he shook his head.

"Fourteen years can change a woman from a beauty to--a--a Christian,
ugly and old and cold," Julian augured.

The Maccabee turned his head away from his tormentor and Julian's
laughter trailed off into a half-jocular groan.

"How much you harp on beauty!" the Maccabee said deliberately. "Are
you then going to regret the actresses you left behind when I tore you
from your exalted calling as the forelegs of the elephant in the
theaters at Ephesus?"

Julian's face blackened. A foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him
at that instant. He flung him