er 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.

He smiled a baffling smile and she looked at him in despair. The very
charm of his personal appearance awakened resentment in her; his deft
and easy complaisance angered her because it could be effective. She
hated the superficial excellence in him which made him a pleasant
companion. He had refused to discuss her identity further, except to
prevent her in her own attempts to identify herself. He did not refer
to the incidents of their journey to Jerusalem, but she felt that he
was conscious of all these things, and her resentment was so great
that she put it out of sight, lest at the time when she should be
proved she would have come to hate him to the further thwarting of
their work for Israel.

"It is sweet to have you concerned for me. Now you may understand how
much I am troubled for your own welfare. Do not regard me with that
unbending gaze. I am, first and before all else, your friend."

"You have changed," she said slowly. "I did not find in you this
solicitude in the hills."

"Unhappiness," he sighed, "makes most men law-less. I should be even
now as bad, were I not sure of the sympathy you feel for me."

She looked at him with large disdain.

"Does not this woman treat you well?" she asked with the first glimmer
of sarcasm in her eyes.

"Her displeasure in me is that I do not make her a queen; yours,
however, that I can not save this doomed nation! Her ambitions are for
herself; yours are for me. Which waketh the response in my heart,
lady?"

"What have I lived for?" she burst out. "For what was I brought up and
schooled? For what have I sacrificed all the light and desirable
things of my youth, but for--"

"Nay! Do not show me, yet, that you are only bent on being queen!" he
exclaimed.

"I care for nothing but the rescue of Judea!" she cried passionately.
"There is nothing left to me but that!"

"Then your ambitions ar