I shall wait till your extraordinary servant
returns."
At this decided speech Laodice showed a little panic.
"No, no! I am not afraid. He--"
But the Maccabee ignored the implied dismissal.
"I owe him both a reproof and thanks for leaving you here alone for
any wayfarer to approach--and for me to discover. I wish," gazing
abroad over the broken horizon, "there were no well between here and
Jerusalem, and that he were as thirsty as Tantalus."
She made no reply to this remark, but her whole presence expressed
discomfort in his determination to remain.
"Heathen Hecate ought to get him in these wilds for forcing that cruel
journey on you last night, when you were so weary and sad! There was
no good in it. He wanted simply to get you away from me! Let us hope
that Titus has got him for his museum by this time, and be at ease!"
She raised her head and reproach flashed through the meshes of her
veil.
"Momus is a good man," she said.
"He can not be," he insisted. "Have I not set forth his iniquities
even now?"
"It was a short task," she maintained. "But time is not long enough to
count his virtues."
"I can spend time better," he declared.
He saw her silken brows lower in a spirited frown and he was glad. She
was showing some other feeling than that dead level of unhappiness
that had possessed her from the first moment he had seen her.
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