The unknown had seized him.
But for his feeling that this interruption was necessary to the welfare of another soul, the Christian would not have paused in his ministry.
The phantom straightened himself with a superb reinvestment of manhood.
"Thou, son of the Maccabee, Philadelphus!" he exclaimed to the kneeling man.
The Ephesian's arms sank.
"Who art thou that knoweth me ?" he asked in a dead voice.
"I am all that plague and sin hath left of thy servant Aquila," the phantom declared.
The Maccabee lifted his face for what should follow this revelation.
It was only a manifestation of his subjection to another will than his own.

He was not interested--he who was hoping to die.
"Hear me, and curse me!" Aquila went on.

"But save thy wife yet.

I say unto thee, master, that she whom thou hast sheltered in the cavern is thy wife, Laodice!" The Maccabee struggled up to his feet and gazed with stunned and unbelieving eyes at this wreck of his pagan servant, who went on precipitately.
"Her I plotted against at the instigation of Julian of Ephesus.

Her, my mistress, Salome the Cyprian, robbed and hath impersonated thus long to her safety in the house of the Greek.