Julian cast a look at the sleeper and hesitated. Then he scanned the
road; he might miss Aquila. He seemed to relinquish the intent that
had risen in him, and sat down again.
After a while as his constant gaze at the passers-by led him again
toward the overflowing well, he saw there, standing in a long line,
awaiting turn to dip a vessel in the water, the old bowed servant,
with a skin in his hand. The girl was nowhere to be seen.
Julian sprang to his feet and, hastening across the road, considerably
below the well, climbed the hill in the direction in which he had seen
the girl disappear.
That watchful alarm in the brain which, at moments of demand, is
instantly alive in certain sleepers, aroused the Maccabee almost as
soon as the stealthy, receding footsteps of Julian died away. He
stirred, sat up and looked about him. Julian was nowhere to be seen.
Both horses were feeding a little distance away. The Maccabee sprang
up and looked toward the well. There patiently but apprehensively
waiting was old Momus. The girl was not with him. Suspicion grew vivid
in the Maccabee's brain. The tender rank grass about him showed the
print of his cousin's steps as they led away toward the road. He
followed intently. The slim marks of the well-shod feet led him across
the dust of the road up into gravel on the slope and finally eluded
him on the escarpment that soared away above him.
The Maccabee hurried to the top of the declivity to gain whatever aid
that point of vantage might offer and from that height saw below him
to the west a single nook shaped of rock and hummock and a tree out of
which rose a blue thread of smoke. He dropped down the farther slope
at a pace little short of a run.
He mounted the slight ridge that overlooked the depression in time to
see Julian of Ephesus appear over the opposite side. Within, with her
mantle laid off, her veil thrown back, the girl knelt over a bed of
coals, baking one of the Maccabee's Milesian ducks. Julian had made a
sound; the Maccabee had come silently. She looked up and saw the less
kindly man first, flashed white with terror, sprang to her feet with a
cry, and whirled to flee up the other side. There she confronted the
Maccabee with hands extended to ward off the encroachment of his
cousin. Without an instant's hesitation she flew into the Maccabee's
arms. His clasp closed around her and she shrank against him, clinging
to the folds of his tunic over his breast with hands that were
tremulous.
Her flight to him for refuge achieved an instant change in the
Maccabee. The fear of defeat, the primal hate of a rival, died in him.
All that remained was big wrath at the presumption and effrontery of
Julian of Ephesus. He had no definite memory of what followed, because
of the rush of blood in his veins, the whirl of pleasurable sensation
in his brain and the weight of a sweet frightened figure pressed to
him. The Ephesian went, leaving an impression of a most vindictive
threat in the glittering smile and the motion of his shapely hand
clenched at the victorious Maccabee. The girl drew away hastily. The
veil was over her face and through its silken meshes he saw the glow
on her cheeks and the sweep of her lowered lashes down upon that
bloom.