Though she turned cold and flashed white when he came upon her one day
in the darkness of their shelter, she felt nevertheless the relief of
approaching a solution to her perplexity.
"They tell me," he said with the deliberate speech of the old, "that
Titus is once more permitting citizens to depart from Jerusalem
unharmed."
"Then," she said, grasping at this hope, "why do you stay here in this
peril?"
"Why should I leave it? Even with the singers who wept by the waters
of Babylon, I prefer Jerusalem above my chief joy. Except for the time
when we of the Way were warned to depart, I have been in Jerusalem all
my life. Then, though I had gone as far as Cæsarea on my way to
Antioch to join the brethren there, homesickness overtook me and I
turned in my tracks, saying no man farewell, and came back."
"A weary journey for one so old," she said gently.
Would he remember also that it had been dangerous?
"Nay, but a journey full of works and reward. And I discovered at the
end of it that I had lived in error forty years; that Christ never
ceases to prove Himself."
Already the forbidden tenets of the Nazarene faith had entered into
his words. But feeling somehow that her deflection from uprightness
covered her whole life, there was no reason why she should not hear
what these people believed and have done with it.
"Art thou a Christian?" she asked timidly.
"I am a believer in Christ, but whether I may call myself one of the
blessed I do not know, for they have had faith. But I demanded a sign.
Behold it! The ruin of the City of David!"
Her eyes widened with alarm.
"Is there no hope?" she exclaimed.
He looked at her, even in his old age impressed with the immense
importance life and love must have to so beautiful and beloved a
woman. Presently he said, as if to himself: "Yea, be thou blessed, O thou Redeemer, that givest life to them to
whom life is dear and death approacheth."
Her concern for concealment vanished entirely in her rising terror for
the future of the Holy City.
"I pray thee, Rabbi," she said in a low voice, drawing close to him,
"tell me what thy people believe about the city. I have heard--but it
can not be true!"
"Do not be troubled about the city," he answered. "Ask me rather how
to become safeguarded against any disaster, greater even than the fall
of cities."
"It is not for myself," she protested earnestly, "but for the world.
Is there not a King to come to Israel?"
"There is, but not yet, my daughter. Of that day and hour no man
knoweth. Now is Daniel's abomination of desolation; the generation
passeth and the prophecy is fulfilled. Jerusalem is perishing."