He had taken part in a hundred desperate battles.
Again and again he had risked his life; again and again he had escaped.
For one so young he had reached high rank, till he was numbered among
the first of their captains.
Then came the end, the last hideous struggle and the downfall. Once more
his life was left in him. Where men perished by the hundred thousand he
escaped, winning safety, not through the desire of it, but because of
the love of Miriam which drove him on to follow her. Happily for himself
he had hidden money, which, after the gift of his race, he was able to
turn to good account, so that now he, who had been a leader in war
and council, walked the world as a merchant in Eastern goods. All that
glittering past had gone from him; he might become wealthy, but, Jew as
he was, he could never be great nor fill his soul with the glory that
it craved. There remained to him, then, nothing but this passion for
one woman among the millions who dwelt beneath the sun, the girl who had
been his playmate, whom he loved from the beginning, although she had
never loved him, and whom he would love until the end.
Why had she not loved him? Because of his rival, that accursed Roman,
Marcus, the man whom time upon time he had tried to kill, but who had
always slipped like water from his hands.
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