"Aye, and thine with it, sweet maiden," cried Apollonius, imagining that his prey was yielding to his importunities.
But he was quickly undeceived. Deborah's whole form seemed to expand. In the wine-dimmed eyes of her captor she was transformed from a helpless girl into the most queenly of women, whose dignity awed him; then into some avenging deity; a divine apparition of purity which had come to scourge him for his lifetime of lust and cruelty.
"My life?" she cried. "Can a Greek understand this—that Elkiah would slay his daughter with his own hand if he knew that Apollonius had touched her?"
The soldier who had never quailed before men was cowed by this woman. What was left of manhood in him asserted itself in maudlin apology. He sought to appease the righteous fury he had excited.
But it was too late. The woman was no longer a suppliant. As a soldier is turned by excitement of the battle into a fiend, so Deborah was turned into a soldier, and now became her own defender. She withdrew to the farther side of the apartment. As she did so she caught sight of the sword of the General lying upon a table. She noted its hilt gemmed with jewels, and its blade etched with heroic devices. She seized it, and sprang like a tigress upon the unarmed man. As he crouched back to avoid the stroke, Deborah stopped.
"Stay, I will not slay you like a caged beast. Let the great Apollonius outrage a defenseless woman—a Jewish woman would despise herself if she harmed a defenseless Greek. The daughter of feeble Elkiah will give the brave Apollonius a chance for his life. Unbar the door, or let it be said that a woman slew thee. I will not ask a pledge of a Greek to spare my father. I would not trust the word he has already broken. Jehovah of Israel will avenge my father's house! Unbar the door!"
Apollonius flung a quick glance around to discover a mode of escape. Had he been fully possessed of his wits he would doubtless have found some means of disarming his assailant. Yet the action of the woman was so alert and resolute that most men would have been held at bay. She poised the weapon for its lunge. Had the Jewess learned the art of fence? Or did the quickening of her faculties by the intensity of her purpose supply the deficiency of training? Her attitude was perfect for the giving of the fatal blow. In the General's eyes at the moment, if she were not Ares, the god of war, she was Athena armed,—no less puissant.
The baffled chieftain had no alternative but submission. Yet it was not mere submission to the accident of her advantage. There was a sort of voluntary homage in the way in which, half sobered by the situation, he yielded to the inevitable.
"The daughter of Elkiah has won her liberty," said he, with a wave of his hand that nearly sent him sprawling. He staggered to where a bronze plate hung, and struck it. As its signal was answered from without, he cried:
"Ho, Servites, let the woman pass!"