"Even so. But of your creature comforts. My house is open to your
chief enemy. It must be so. You must be hidden--not concealed, but
disguised. You know my weakness for people of charm and people of
ability. My house is full of them. The master of this place is
indulgent; he permits me to add to my collection whatever pleases me
in the way of society. Therefore, you are come as a student of this
wonderful drama to be enacted in Jerusalem presently. You may live
under part of your name. Substitute, however, your city for your
surname. Be Philadelphus of Ephesus. No one then will question your
presence here.
"I have bound to me by oath and by fear one hundred Idumeans who will
rise or fall with you. They are of John's own army and alienated to
you without his knowledge. Hence they are in armor and ready at any
propitious moment. This house is provisioned and equipped for siege;
everything is prepared."
"At what cost, my Amaryllis?" he asked tenderly.
She drew away from him quickly, as if his tone had touched a place of
deeper disappointment.
"That I do not remember. I am your minister; you need no other. More
than the one would be multiplying chances for betrayal."
"And what wilt thou have out of all this for thyself?" he asked.
Slowly she turned her face back to him.
"I would have it said that I made a king," she said.
There was a step in the corridor leading into the andronitis, and,
smiling, Amaryllis rose. Philadelphus got upon his feet and looked to
catch the first glimpse of the woman who was bringing him two hundred
talents.
A woman entered the hall. Behind her came a servant bearing a
shittim-wood casket.
Had Amaryllis been looking for suspicious signs, she would have
observed in the intense silence that fell, in the arrested attitude of
the pair, more than a natural embarrassment. Any one informed that
these were a pair of impostors would have seen that there was no
confusion here, but amazement, chagrin and no little fear.
Instead, Amaryllis, nothing suspecting, glanced from one set face to
the other and laughed.
"Poor children! Married fourteen years and more than strangers to each
other! I will take myself off until you recover."
She signed to the servant to follow her and passed out of the hall.
Philadelphus then put off his stony quiet and gazed wrathfully at the
woman who had entered.
Hers was a fine frame, broad and square of shoulder, tall and lank of
hip as some great tiger-cat, and splendid in its sinuosity. She had
walked with a long stride and as she dropped into the chair she
crossed her limbs so that her well-turned ankles showed and the hands
she clasped about her knees were long and strong, white and remarkably
tapering. Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was
sensuous, insolent and dazzling. Withal her presence intimated
tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered
potentialities. And she was royal! No mere upstart of an impostor
could have assumed that perfect hauteur, that patrician bearing.