Presently he freed that arm and with the ease of much usage
withdrew the bodkins from her hair. The heavy coil dropped over his
breast down to his knee. With delicate touches he began to free from
the splendid tangle a single strand of glistening white hair. When she
saw it shining like spun silver across the back of his hand, she
looked up at him. With infinite care he searched her face, while she
waited with questioning in her tender eyes.
"This," he said, lifting the hand that supported the silver threads,
"is the sole evidence that thou hast seen the abomination of
desolation."
"And that came the night I journeyed away from Jerusalem, without
you," she declared. "But, my Philadelphus," she said, turning herself
a little that she might hide her face away from him, "had I stayed
with you against my conscience, I had been by this time wholly white."
He kissed her.
"I did not expect you to stay," he said. "I knew from the beginning
that you would not. Ask Joseph. He will bear me out."
Low on the slope of the hill, the shepherd approached, calling his
sheep that trailed after him contentedly by the hundreds. The excited
bark of Urge, the sheep-dog, came up faintly to them.
While they leaned watching them, old Momus, bent and broken, stood
before them. Laodice hurriedly drew away from her husband's clasp. It
was a habit she had never entirely shaken off, whenever the mute
appeared, in spite of the old man's pathetic dumb protest.
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