He laid a hand unsteady with its tremor of delight and young eagerness upon the vitta and it slipped off her hair. As it dropped, the subtle warm fragrance of the heavy locks, now braided in maidenly style, reached him; the liveliness of her relaxed young figure communicated itself to him without his touch; all the invitation of her helplessness swept him to the very edge of abandoning his restraint. On his dark face a transformation occurred. All the hardness, even his years and his experience vanished from him and a soft recovering flush faintly colored his cheeks. In that sudden bloom of beauty in his face was stamped a realization of the far progress of his triumph. She was in his house and dependent on him, within the very reach of his arms.
When she looked up at him again, she read all this in his face, and instantly there returned to her, with warning intensity, the fear of her love of him. The last obstacle but her own conscience that stood between her and his perfect supremacy over her life had suddenly been swept away.
She started away from him, and put up her hands to ward off his touch.
"If you do that," she said in a tone sharp with distress, "it is sin and I shall be cursed! I shall have to go back to him!"
Then she had voluntarily left Julian, perhaps to seek him!
"You shall not go back to him!" he exclaimed. "After I have given up everything but my life to have you for myself!"
"You must not think of me in that way!" she commanded him vehemently. "I am a married woman! You shall remember that! If you forget it, I will go out into the streets and ask the Idumeans to kill me!"
"Nay, peace, peace! I shall do you no harm! You are frightened! I will do nothing that you would not have me do! Be comforted. Not any one in all the world has your happiness at heart so much as I. Believe me!"
"Believe me!" she insisted. "I am weary of doubt and denial. I am only safe if you recognize me as that which I claim to be. Answer me! You do believe I am the wife of Philadelphus?"
"I believed it, at once," he said frankly.