Seraiah passed above the spot where the sorrowful Christian stood,
crossed the great causeway leading toward the Royal Portico and after
him six thousand blind and insane enthusiasts followed, expecting
imminent miracle. Above them towered the heights of Moriah, now veiled
in smoke. Up the great white bank of stairs they rushed after him,
facing an ordeal which must mean a baptism in fire, and on through a
curtain of luminous smoke into a gate pillared in flame, up into the
Royal Portico, resounding with the tread of the advancing Destroyer,
out into the great Court of Gentiles wrapped in cloud through which
the Temple showed, a stupendous cube of heat, through the Gate
Beautiful where the Keeper no longer stood, thence into the Women's
Court, raftered with red coals, up smoking stones tier upon tier till
the roof of the Royal Portico was reached.
At the brink of the pinnacle, they saw through tumbling clouds Seraiah
towering. He was looking down through masses of smoke upon the City of
Delight, perishing. They who had followed watched, uplifted with
terror and frenzy, and while they waited for the miracle which should
save, the roof crumbled under them and a grave of thrice heated rock
received them and covered them up.
Below, Nathan, the Christian, seized upon the shoulders of the
Maccabee as he was dashing after the thousands. His face was black
with terror for Laodice. He struggled to throw off Nathan, crying
futilely against the uproar that Laodice was perishing.
"Comfort thee!" the Christian shouted in his ear. "She is saved. She
sent me to thee."
The Maccabee stopped, as if he realized that he need not go on, but
had not comprehended what was said to him.
Nathan dragged him out of the way, still choked with people struggling
to pass on to the Temple or to flee from it. Half-way down the Vale of
Gihon, where speech was a little more possible, the Maccabee, who had
been crying questions, made the old man hear.
"Where is she? Where is she?"
"She has returned to her husband. In love with thee, she has done that
only which she could do and escape sin. She has gone to shelter with
him whom she does not love!"
The Maccabee seized his head in his hands.
"It is like her--like her!" he groaned.
In the Christian's heart he knew how narrowly Laodice had made her
lover's mark for her.
"It is her wish," Nathan continued, "that I teach thee Christ whom she
hath received."
"How can I receive Him, when He sent her from me?" the unhappy man
groaned, unconscious of his contradictions.
"How canst thou reject Him when His teaching led thy love to do that
which thine own lips have confessed to be the better thing?"