"Nay, I am not mad; would that I were!" said the other faintly.
"I repeat that thou art mad," cried Annas, his eyes blazing with a scornful fire. "What! my daughter repudiated by thee?"
"She hath become a follower of the Nazarene," said Caiaphas dully. "Could she longer be wife of mine?"
"Where is she?"
"She hath gone to them."
Annas was silent for a time. "If what thou sayest be no figment of a disordered brain," he said deliberately, "then I say thou hast done well. No longer wife of thine, she shall be no longer daughter of mine. She is henceforth one of the followers of him whom we hanged upon the accursed tree. As for them, shall I tell thee what shall shortly come to pass?"
The younger man made no reply.
"When men would plant grain in a field which hath been a wilderness," continued Annas, still in the same icy, deliberate tones, "they root up the tares and utterly destroy them with fire. This shall we do with these mischievous and deadly weeds that be winding their poisonous roots about the only props that remain to our suffering nation, the temple and the home. But let not this thing be spoken of--the matter of the woman, I mean. There is no need to make our name a byword and a hissing; she hath for the present gone to pay a visit; later we shall, perhaps, devise a way to secretly rid ourselves----"
"What!" cried Caiaphas, starting up. "Wouldst thou----?"
"Hist, man, the others are coming!--wilt thou remain? We shall this morning concern ourselves with this very matter."