“Rabbi”—and to his wide mouth came [pg 121]the sneer of one propounding a riddle already solved—“it is not meet, is it, to thresh on the Sabbath day? Yet since you permit your followers to do so, how are we to distinguish between what is lawful and what is not?”
The Master raised his eyes. The dawn was in them, high noon as well.
“Show yourself a tried money-changer. Choose that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”
Simon blinked as at a sudden light.
“But,” he persisted, “in seeking to observe the Law, there is not a jot or tittle in it that can be rejected.”
With an acquiescence that was both vague and melancholy, Jesus looked the Pharisee in the face.
“Seek those things that are great, and little things will be added unto you——”
He would have said more, perhaps, but a woman who had entered from the recess approached circuitously, and kneeling beside him let a tear, long as a pearl, fall upon his unsandalled feet.
Judas’ heart bounded; he glared at [pg 122]her, his eyes dilating like a leopard preparing to spring. At once he was back in the circus, gazing into the perils and the splendors of a woman’s face, telling himself with reiterated insistence that to hold her to him would be the birthday of his life; and here, within reach of his hand, was she whom in the din of the chariots he had recognized as the one woman in all the world, and who for one moment the day before had lain unconscious in his arms.
Reulah sat motionless, his mouth agape, a finger extended. “The paramour of Pandera,” he stammered at last; and lowering his eyes, he looked at her covetously from beneath the lids.