"We are unclean," Laodice said with effort. "We have come from a pestilential city and we have touched the dead. We can not enter a town with these defilements upon us, except to present ourselves to a priest for examination and separation. Furthermore, we must burn our unessential belongings. If you are a Jewess all these things are known to you."
The woman extended her hands, palms upward, with a grace that was almost dainty.
"Lady," she said behind her unlifted veil, "I am an unlettered woman and have been accustomed to the instruction of my masters. I am obedient to the laws of our people."
"You would have been in less peril to have ridden alone," Laodice sighed. "Our company has been no help to you."
"We can not say that confidently. There are worse things than pestilence in the wilderness," the woman replied.
Momus seemed to observe more confidence than was natural in the ready answers of this professed servant, and before he would leave Laodice to pitch camp, he helped her to alight and drew her with him. The woman remained on her mount.
Gathering up sticks, dead needles of cedar and last year's leaves, he made a fire upon which he heaped fuel till it lighted up the near-by slopes of the hills and roared jovially in the broad wind.
It was a pocket in the heart of high hills into which they had fled. The bold, sure line of a Roman road divided it, cutting tyrannically through the cowed hovels of the town as an arrow drives through a flock of pigeons. On either side were the dim shapes of great rocks and semi-recumbent cedars. Retiring into shadow were the darker outlines of the surrounding circle of hills, rived by intervals of black night where wadies entered. From their summits the flying arch of the heavens sprang, printed with a few faint stars, but all silvered with the flood-light of a moon cold and pure as the frost itself. It was unsympathetic, aloof and wild–a cold place into which to bring broken hearts to assume banishment from the comfort and companionship of mankind.
Laodice slowly and with effort began to separate those belongings which were to be laid upon the fire from those which were too necessary to be burned. The woman alighted but, on offering to assist, was warned away from the girl with a menacing gesture of Momus' great arm. The stranger drew herself up suddenly with a wrath that she hardly controlled but came no nearer Laodice. When the girl finally finished her selection, the woman begged permission to attend to the camels and getting the beasts on their feet led them together to be tethered.
Laodice, assisted by Momus, took up the condemned supplies and flung them one at a time upon the roaring fire. Little by little, with growing reluctance, the heap of spare belongings was examined and condemned, until finally only the garments they wore, the tents that were to shelter them and the essential harness of the camels were left. Then Momus drew from his wallet a fragment of aromatic gum and cast it on the blaze. While it ignited and burned with great vapors of penetrating incense, he unstrapped the precious casket, set it down between his feet, stripped off his comfortable woolen tunic and passed it through the volumes of white smoke piling up from the fire.