"Tut! You merely wish to keep me from seeing this girl," Philadelphus
retorted.
He, too, stopped at the prostrate cedar and gazed under the sagging
shelter of skins.
"Shade of Helen!" he exclaimed under his breath as the firelight gave
him perfect view of the sleeping girl. "What have we here?"
Julian made no response. He drew nearer and looked in silence.
"Now what are they to each other?" Philadelphus continued. "Father and
daughter; lady and servant or--a courtezan and her manager?"
At the continued silence of his companion, he argued his question
himself.
"No such ill-fashioned peasant loins as his ever begat such sweet
patrician perfection as that!" he declared. "And a lady rich enough to
have one servant would travel with more than one or not at all--"
Julian broke in with sudden avid interest.
"Look at that deal of feminine flummery--that dress of silver tissue,
the ends of that silken scarf you see below the covering--all those
jewels and trinkets! Odd garb for travel afoot, is it not? It is a
badge not to be put off even in as barren a market as this. She is
going to Jerusalem for the Passover. He will carry the purse, however,
mark me."
"How well you know the marks of delinquency!" Philadelphus said with a
glimmer of resentment in his eyes.
"Who does not? What do the Jewish psalmists and proverbialists and
purists depict so minutely as that migrating iniquity, the strange
woman?"
"But look at her!" Philadelphus insisted. "I have not seen anything so
bewitching since I left Ephesus!"
"No; nor a long time before!" Julian declared. "I must have a nearer
look."
"Careful! You will wake her!"
Julian's face showed a sneer at his companion's concern.
"I'll have a care not to wake the old Boeotian," he said.
He stepped between Laodice and her sleeping servant. The mute with the
stupor of slumber further to disable his dulled hearing, did not move.
"Young!" Philadelphus exclaimed in a whisper. "And new to the life!"
"Pfui!" Julian scoffed. "Sleep makes even Venus look innocent!"
"Then this is the most innocent wickedness I have seen in months!"
"So you catalogue innocence as a charm! It's not here. But if she had
no beauty but that eyelash I'd be speared upon it!"
Philadelphus turned toward the old servant plunged in the exhausted
sleep of weary age.
"Thou grizzled nightmare!" he exclaimed vindictively.
He glanced again at the girl. Julian had knelt beside her. Between the
two men passed a look that was mutually understood.
"Remember," Julian whispered, "you are a married man."
Philadelphus paled suddenly with anger as the intent of his companion
dawned upon him, but he put off his temper shrewdly.
"And so approaching a time when wayside beauties will no longer be
free to me," he said, cutting off his fellow in the beginning of his
preëmption. "And you have a long freedom before you."