had suddenly been
swept away.

She started away from him, and put up her hands to ward off his touch.

"If you do that," she said in a tone sharp with distress, "it is sin
and I shall be cursed! I shall have to go back to him!"

Then she had voluntarily left Julian, perhaps to seek him!

"You shall not go back to him!" he exclaimed. "After I have given up
everything but my life to have you for myself!"

"You must not think of me in that way!" she commanded him vehemently.
"I am a married woman! You shall remember that! If you forget it, I
will go out into the streets and ask the Idumeans to kill me!"

"Nay, peace, peace! I shall do you no harm! You are frightened! I will
do nothing that you would not have me do! Be comforted. Not any one in
all the world has your happiness at heart so much as I. Believe me!"

"Believe _me_!" she insisted. "I am weary of doubt and denial. I am
only safe if you recognize me as that which I claim to be. Answer me!
You do believe I am the wife of Philadelphus?"

"I believed it, at once," he said frankly.

"Then--then--" but she flung her hands over her face and slipped down
on the rugs. For a moment he hesitated, restraining the impulse to
break over the limits she had laid down for him.

Then he rose and, summoning one of the women who had taken refuge in
the crypt, sent her to remain with the girl, and departed, shaken and
uncertain, to his own place.

Chapter XVIII

IN THE SUNLESS CRYPT

The twilight of the cavern rarely revealed enough of the features of
her fellows to Laodice for her to identify them or for them to
identify her. She lived among them a dusky shadow among shadows. And
because of her fear that Philadelphus might be searching for her, she
stayed in the sunless crypt day by day until the Maccabee, noting with
affectionate distress that she was growing white and weak, bade her
take one of the women and venture up to the light.

There were, besides the women, two men who took no part in the
preparation for war which went on about them in the cavern day and
night. While weapons and armor were made and tramping ranks formed and
broke before the commands of the lithe dark commander of that fortress
and subdued but fierce councils took place around torches--while all
this went on, they kept back, even apart from the women, and said
nothing.

Laodice saw that they were physically unfit; that one was very old and
the other very feeble and her heart warmed