Laodice, the Christian and that white-haired trembler in his refuge,
saw the Maccabee raise himself to his full height and lifting his
sword confront in one grand effort at command a mob of six hundred
madmen!
Perhaps that manifestation of iron courage and strength, which the
crazy lot somehow realized, saved him from death. Instead of falling
upon him they turned away from the scene of the last vain effort for
their own salvation and rushed, trampling one another, into the mad
city of Jerusalem.
From without, the hoarse uproar of their desertion was heard to merge
with the great tumult over the Holy City. Tense silence fell in the
crypt.
The light of the torch wavered up and down the tall figure of the
Maccabee as he stood transfixed in the attitude of command that had
achieved nothing. It seemed the final inclination beyond the
perpendicular that precedes the fall. The Christian started from his
place and hurried toward the tense figure in the torch-light. Laodice,
unconscious of what she did, approached him with an agony of distress
for him written in her face. The white-haired apparition crept out a
little way on his knees and putting aside his tangled locks gazed with
burning eyes at the defeated man.
Laodice, in her anxiety, moved into the range of the Maccabee's
vision. The next instant he had thrown away his sword and had caught
her in a crushing embrace to him. His voice, blunted and repressed as
if something had him by the throat, was stunning her ear.
"And thou!" he was saying. "What from thee, now? Hate! Curses!
Ingratitude! Hast thou poison for me, or a knife? Or worse, yet,
scorn? Speak! It is a day of enlightenment! I'll brook anything but
deceit!"
She stopped him in the midst of his vehement despair, by laying her
hands on his hair. There surged to her lips all the eloquence of her
love and sympathy, but beside her old Nathan stood--an embodiment of
her conscience, watching.
Twice she essayed to put into words the comfort of her submission to
his love. Twice her lips failed her; but the third time she turned to
the Christian.
"Rabbi, what shall I do?" she implored. "Tell me out of thy wisdom!"
"What is it?" he asked, feeling that there was more than sympathy for
the defeated man in her heart.
"What would thy Christ have me to do?" she insisted. "This stranger,
here, is the joy of my heart; I am like to die if I can not give him
the love that I feel for him this hour!"
The startled Christian looked at her with suspicion growing in his
eyes.
"Art thou a wife? Wedded to another than this man?" he asked gravely.
"Wedded," she whispered, "to one who hath denied me, affronted me and
cast me out of his house! In this man I have found favor from the
beginning. He has been tender of me, he has sheltered me, and he has
strengthened me against himself to this hour. There has been nothing
sinful between us!"