"What have you to offer them in their hope of a Messiah?" she said
pointedly.
"Messiah! What else is preached in the Temple but the Messiah, or in
the proseuchae or the streets or on the walls? We eat, drink, sleep,
fight, buy, sell, rob or restore in the name of the Messiah! They are
surfeited with religion."
"Are they?" she asked sententiously. "But you haven't given them a
Messiah."
He looked at her without comprehending.
"You have a mad city here; you can not reason with it; indulge it,
then, as you indulge your lunatics," she suggested.
He shook his head, smiling that he did not understand her. She turned
again to Seraiah.
"Watch him," she insisted. "He possesses me."
After a long silence in which John trifled with his wine, she prepared
to rise.
"Send me the roll of the law," the woman said suddenly.
"Posthumus shall bring it. He is another lunatic. Experiment with him
and learn how I shall act toward the city."
"Well said," she averred; "and I will see your Idumeans. Is it proper
for me to appear in the Temple?"
The Gischalan's eyes flashed a sudden elation and delight. He bent low
and kissed her hand.
"And I will fetch somewhat which will divert us," she added and was
gone.
When a few moments later John passed again into the Greek's apartment,
Amaryllis entered from an inner corridor. Before she spoke to the
master of the house she addressed a servant who had been a moment
before summoned.
"Send hither my guest."
"The stranger?" John asked. "Is she still with you?"
"I mean to add her to my household, if you will," she explained.
"Keep her or dismiss her at your pleasure."
"It shall be for my pleasure. She has a charm that besets me. It will
be entertainment to discover her history."
"I see no mystery in her. It is plain enough that there is between her
and this married Philadelphus some cause for her coming. His wife is
much more engaging."
She sighed and dropped into her ivory chair, pushed back the locks of
fair hair that had loosened from their fillet and waited languidly.
John studied her critically. In the last hour the slowly dissolving
bond between them seemed to have vanished, wholly, at once.
"O Queen of Kings," he said, "art thou lonely in this mad place?"
"I have found diversion," she answered.
"With these new guests?"
"With these new guests. Observe them; there are a pair of lovers among
them, mersed in difficulty, hampering themselves, multiplying sorrow
and sure to accomplish the same end as if they had proceeded happily."
"Interested no longer in thine own passion? Alas, my Amaryllis, that
love is dead that is interested no longer in itself."