possess. Mary, if you would but taste it with me! Oh, to mix with
you as light with day, as stream with sea, I would suck the flame that
flickers on the walls of sepulchres."

She shuddered, and he saw it.

"You have taught me to love," he hissed; "do not teach me now to hate."

Mary mastered her revolt. "Judas, the day will come when you will cease to
speak as you do."

"You believe, then, still?"

"Yes, surely; and so do you."

"The day will come," he muttered, "when you will cease to believe."

"And you too," she answered. "For then you will _know_."

The dialogue with its variations continued, at intervals, for months.
There were times, weeks even, when he avoided all speech with her. Then,
abruptly, when she expected it least, he would return more volcanic than
before. These attacks she accustomed herself to regard as necessary,
perhaps, to the training of patience, of charity too, and so bore with
them, until at last Jerusalem was reached. Meanwhile she held to her trust
as to a fringe of the mantle of Christ. To her the past was a grammar, its
name--To-morrow. And in the service of the Master, in the future which he
had evoked, she journeyed and dreamed.

But in Jerusalem Judas grew acrider. He had fits of unnecessary laughter,
and spells of the deepest melancholy. He quarrelled with anyone who would
let him, and then for the irritation he had displayed he would make amends
that were wholly slavish. His companions distrusted him. He had been seen
talking amicably with the corrupt levites, the police of the Temple, and
once he had been detected in a wine-shop of low repute. The Master,
apparently, noticed nothing of this; nor did Mary, whose thoughts were on
other things.

At Bethany one evening Judas came to her. The sun, sinking through clouds,
placed in the west the tableau of a duel to the death between a titan and
a god. There was the glitter of gigantic swords, and the red of immortal
blood.

"Mary," he began, and as he spoke there was a new note in his voice--"Mary,
I have watched and waited, and to those that watch how many lamps burn
out! One after another those that I tended went. There was a flicker, a
little smoke, and they had gone. I tried to relight them, but perhaps the
oil was spent; perhaps, too, I was like the blind that hold a torch. My
way has not been clear. The faith I had, and which, I do not know, but
which, it may be, would have been strengthened, evaporated when you came.
Th