h unto the end shall be saved."

"What end?"

"Death."

She was silent while she gazed at him with change showing on her
gradually paling face.

"Then--then what is in thy faith for the forlorn in love?" she
exclaimed.

"Peace, and the consciousness of the joy of Christ in your
steadfastness," he said.

She rose. How much longer had she to live?

"And thou sayest we die?"

"_Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul_," he said gently.

Fear Hesper, then, but not the Roman. While she stood in the immense
debate of heart and conscience he laid a tender hand on her head.

"Perchance in His mercy thou shalt be welcomed there first by thy
father, whom I buried, and by thy mother."

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.

Leaving her transfixed with all he had said, he moved painfully away,
stiffened by long sitting while he discoursed.

Chapter XIX

THE FALSE PROPHET

It was a different Amaryllis that the pretended Philadelphus faced
now, from the one who had welcomed him on his arrival in Jerusalem
months ago. Then she had been so cold and self-contained that it would
have been effrontery to discuss her hopes with her. Now, with the
avarice of love in her eyes, with wishfulness and defeat making their
sorry signs on her face, she was a creature that even the humblest
would have longed to help.

Philadelphus sat opposite her in the ivory chair which was hers by
right. She sat in the exedra and listened eagerly to the things he
said with her finger-tips on her lips and her eyes gazing from under
her brow as her head drooped.

She had ceased long ago to debate idly on the actual identity of the
man who had called himself Hesper of Ephesus. There was another
question that absorbed her. Of late, it had been brought home to her
that the charm of Laodice for the stranger from Ephesus, to whom the
Greek knew the girl had fled, had been her purity. Why should it
matter so much about virtue? she had asked herself. Why should it
weigh so immeasurably more than the noble gifts of wit and beauty and
strength and charm? Behold, she was wise enough to educate a barbarous
nation, beautiful enough to be