Julian looked up in a startled manner and hurriedly looked away again.
A half-frightened, half-amused smile played about his lips.
"Aquila is no judge of woman," he said finally. "And furthermore, they
say she got to trifling with magic and prowling about the temples to
see if the gods came true. They were afraid she would get them blasted
along with her sometime for her sacrilege. I know all this because
Aquila declared she attached herself to him in sheer poverty in
Ephesus and swore to follow him to the ends of the earth."
The Maccabee smiled.
"Nevertheless, he told me that he was afraid of her, but that she was
a woman and in need and he could not reject her."
Julian's eyes grew insinuating.
"How much then your behavior this morning would have shocked him!" he
murmured.
The smile died on the Maccabee's face. Reference to the girl in the
hills seemed blasphemy on this man's lips.
"And you do not recall your wife's face?" Julian persisted.
The Maccabee's face hardened more. But he shook his head.
"Fourteen years can change a woman from a beauty to--a--a Christian,
ugly and old and cold," Julian augured.
The Maccabee turned his head away from his tormentor and Julian's
laughter trailed off into a half-jocular groan.
"How much you harp on beauty!" the Maccabee said deliberately. "Are
you then going to regret the actresses you left behind when I tore you
from your exalted calling as the forelegs of the elephant in the
theaters at Ephesus?"
Julian's face blackened. A foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him
at that instant. He flung himself out from his saddle and raised his
hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed
laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, dropped it, red and
contracting with pain, at his companion's side.
"Tut! Julian, you are a bad combatant. If you must make way with a
man," the Maccabee advised, "stab him in the back. It is sure--for
you. Ha! Is this Emmaus we see?"
They had ridden up a slight eminence and below them was a disorder of
fallen or decrepit Syrian huts in the hollow place in the hills.
It had been the history of Emmaus for centuries to be known. The feet
of the Crucified One had pressed its ruined streets and His devoted
chroniclers had not failed to set it down in their illuminated
gospels. Army after army in endless procession had thundered through
it since the first invader humbled the glory of Canaan, and few of the
historians had forgotten to record the unimportant incident. Warfare
had hurtled about it for centuries; the Roman army had come upon it
and would continue to come. It had not the spirit to resist; it was
not worthy of conquest. It simply stood in the path of events.