ear to the Master's heart! How can
you feel that you must love and be loved in spite of Him! Pity
yourself all you may you can not then be pitied so much as He pities
you!

"Love as long and as wilfully as you will, and then it is only a
little space. The time of the supremacy of Christ cometh surely, and
that is all eternity! Which will you do--please yourself for an hour,
or be pleased by the will of God through all time? Love is in the
hands of the Lord; you can not consign it longer than the little span
of your life to the hands of the devil."

Momus, in whose mind had passed an immense surmise, was again at her
side.

"O daughter of a noble father," his dumb gaze said, "wilt thou put
away that virtue which was born in thee and let my labor come to
naught?"

But the preaching of Nathan and the reproach of Momus were feeble,
compared to the great tumult that went on in her soul. She had seen
John of Gischala cast Amaryllis aside. Even the Greek's sympathy was
hateful to him. Yet when Laodice had first entered the house of
Amaryllis, the woman had been obliged to dismiss John from her
presence for his own welfare and the welfare of the city. Why this
change?

Amaryllis was no less beautiful, no less brilliant, no less attractive
than she had once been; but the Gischalan had wearied of her.

Laodice recalled that she had not been surprised to see the man throw
Amaryllis aside. It seemed to be the logical outcome of love such as
theirs. How, then, was she to escape that which no other woman escaped
who loved without law? In the soul of that stranger who had called
himself Hesper, were lofty ideals, which had not been the least charm
which had attracted her to him. Was she, then, to dislodge these holy
convictions, to take her place in his heart as one falling short of
them, or were they still to exist as standards which he loved and
which she could not reach? In either event, how long would he
love--what was the length of her probation before she, too, would
encounter the inevitable weariness?

It occurred to her, then, how nearly the natural law of such love
paralleled the religious prohibition that the Christian had shown to
her. However harsh and unjust the sentence seemed, it was rational.
With her own eyes she had seen its predictions borne out. Already the
relief of the sorrowing righteous possessed her. She turned to the
Christian.

"Take me to my husband," she said. "Now! While I have strength."

M