He flung her hand from his arm and strode heavily down the stairs of the inner court. The mother rose from the stone bench by the fountain.
“Well?” she demanded.
The merchant drew his sword from his scabbard. “I must get this arch-deceiver put away. I’ll have the impostor whipped from the city for creating riots. He has turned her head,” and he flung through the street doorway to the crowded city square.
Thecla heard what he said from where she sat sadly down on the stone sill of the upper balcony. “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. . . .” she repeated, “and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me; and he that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth life for my sake should find it”—and she saw as in a trance, the red flowers dancing above the fountains of the city square, the snowy mountains like opal gems in the moonlight encircling the little city, the lake with its myriad pleasure boats alight with lanterns, where the mountain torrents fed the great water pool of the city—when the trance was broken by a wild halloo in the city square.
The little lame speaker was backing away from the menacing rabble now milling round him with hisses of ridicule. Two rough fellows to rear had picked up stones and hurled them. Rocks, rained down from a claque to rear, pushed those forward into a riot. The preacher raised his arm to screen his face. A rock had struck him. She saw the blood gush from his face. He fell—then all was mingled in the confusion of the people running for cover to the booths and shops, when a pound of iron-shod hoofs came over the cobblestones. A Roman Legion swept into the square, encircled the fallen form of the speaker, threw him across the saddle in front of the captain, and wheeled towards the Roman prison on the far side of the plaza. As the crowd came out again from the shops, she caught a glimpse of Thamyris thrusting his sword back in its jeweled scabbard glancing up towards her seat in the window. She drew back sickened in soul and heavy-hearted.
“As though treachery would win love,” she said.
Her mother stood in the curtained entrance.
“Have you given Thamyris his answer?” the woman demanded harshly.
“I have,” answered the girl.
The woman clapped her hands for a servant. A black woman came noiselessly in and lighted the brass chandelier with a long taper.