"What, then, am I to do?" Laodice cried with increasing alarm.
Amaryllis shrugged her shoulders.
"I can advise with John," she said. "Doubtless he will allow you to
remain here until you can provide yourself with other shelter."
Laodice heard this cold sentence with a chill of fear that was new to
her. Faint pictures of hunger and violence, terrifying in the extreme,
confronted her. Yet not any of them frightened her more than the
offered favor of the Gischalan. Her indignation at the woman who had
supplanted her swept over her with a reflexive flush of heat.
"God of my fathers, judge her in her lies, and pour the fire of Thy
wrath upon her!" she exclaimed vehemently.
Amaryllis gazed curiously at the girl. In her soul, she asked herself
if there might not be unsounded depths of fierceness in this nature
which she ought not to stir up.
"Thou hast hope," she said tactfully. "She hath no such beauty as
thine!"
"Nothing but my proofs!" Laodice broke in.
"And Philadelphus is a young man."
"Rejecting her only because I am fairer than she! He is no just man!"
Laodice cried hotly.
"Softly, child," the Greek said, smiling; "thou hast said that he is
thy husband."
Laodice turned away, her brain whirling with anger, fear and shame.
"Well?" said the Greek coolly, after a silence.
"Where shall I go?" Laodice asked.
"Thou hast been too tenderly nurtured to go into the streets. I shall
ask John to shelter thee until thou canst care for thyself."
Laodice looked at her without understanding.
"Thou canst not stay here for long because the wife to Philadelphus is
in a way a power in my house and she will not suffer it. But never
fear; Jerusalem is not yet so far gone that it would not enjoy a
pretty stranger."
The curious sense of indignation that possessed Laodice was purely
instinctive. Her mind could not sense the actual insult in the Greek's
words.
"I would advise you to be kind to Philadelphus."
"But, but--" Laodice cried, struggling with tears and shame, "he has
this day offered insult to his own marriage with me, by asking that I
live in shame with him till it could be proved that I am his wife!"
The Greek's smile did not change.
"If we weigh all the unpleasantness of wedded life in too delicate a
balance, my friend, I fear there would be little, indeed, that would
escape condemnation as humiliating."
Laodice raised her scarlet face to look in wonder at the Greek. The
cold smiling lips dismayed her for a moment.
"And thou seest no shame in this?" she faltered.
"Thou sayest he is thy husband; why resent it?"
"Dost thou not see--see that--what am I but a shameless woman, if I
live with him, though I be married to him thrice over!"