"It is time to be a Jew or against the Jews," she said gravely. "There
is no middle ground concerning Judea at this hour."
Serious words from the lips of a woman in whom a man expects to find
entertainment are obtrusive, a paradox. Still the new generosity in
his heart for this girl made any manner she chose, engaging, so that
it showed him the sight of her face and gave him the sound of her
voice.
"Seeing," he said, "that it is the hour of the Jewish hope, is it
politic for us to declare ourselves for its benefits?"
"The call at this hour," she exclaimed reproachfully, "is to be great
in sacrifice--not for reward. It is the word of the prophets that we
shall not attain glory until we have suffered for it. We have not yet
made the beginning."
She touched so familiarly on his own thoughts which had haunted him
since ambition had awakened in him in his boyhood, that his interest
in his own hope surged to the fore.
"How goes it in Jerusalem?" he asked earnestly.
"Evilly, they say," she answered, "but I have not been in the city.
Yet you see Judea. That which has destroyed it threatens the city.
Jews have no friends abroad over the world. We need then our own, our
own!"
"Trust me, lady, for a good Jew. I have said that I had been one,
because I admit how far I have drifted from my people. But I am going
back!"
Somehow that strong avowal touched the deep springs of her grief. She
knew the pleasure that her father would have felt in it. With the
greatness of his sacrifice in mind, she filled with the determination
that his work should not have been in vain.
She rose and flung back the cumbrous striped mantle on her shoulders
and put out her hands to the Maccabee.
"Hast seen these pilgrims going to the Passover?" she exclaimed, with
color rising as her emotion grew. "All day they have passed; army
after army of Jews, not only strong, but filled with the spirit that
makes men die for a cause! Hast seen Judea, which was once the land of
milk and honey? Wasted! a sight to make Jews gnash their teeth and die
of hate and rage! What hast thou said of Jerusalem? 'The perfection of
beauty and the joy of the whole earth!' threatened with this same
blight that hath made a wilderness of Canaan! If the hour and the
circumstance and the cause will but unite us, this unweaponed host
will stretch away at once in majestic orders of tens of
thousands--legions upon legions that would shame Xerxes for numbers
and that first Cæsar for strength. Then--oh, I can see that calm
battle-line pass like the ocean tide over the stony Roman front, and
forget as the sea forgets the pebbles that opposed it!"