"He gets worse as he approaches the city. I think I ought to leave him. It will not be safe to be near him when his moneyed lady claims him for her own!"
"She–she–" Laodice burst out, "is–may be such a woman!"
"Such a woman as you! No; she will not be. That is what makes him bad. And now that I bethink me, perhaps it is just as well that you proceed to Jerusalem. He may comfort himself with a sight of you, now and then."
"I? I comfort him?" she exclaimed.
"By my soul I know it! What blunders Fortune makes in bestowing wives! Perchance your husband could have got on as well without so radiant a spouse, while my poor beauty-loving friend must needs be paired with a–Alas! there is too much marrying in this world!"
There was a ring of genuine dejection in his voice and when she looked down at him, she saw that his eyes were larger and more sorrowful than she believed they could be. He was hurting himself with his own deceit. She looked away hastily, frightened at the sudden tenderness that his pathetic gaze had wakened in her.
"Alas!" he went on. "The greatest sacrifice and the frequentest in this world of cross-purposes never gets into poetry. I–" he halted a moment and looked away, "I ought to be sorry for her, too. She is not getting the best of men."
"Verily!" she exclaimed impulsively.
He whirled his head toward her, stared; then with a flash of intense expression in his eyes burst into a ringing laugh that shook him from head to foot. He flung out his hand and catching hers passed it across his lips without kissing it, and let it go before he regained composure enough to speak.
"No! Not a good man! Verily! But hath he no cause to be delinquent?"