"Are—are these—thy people?" she asked in a whisper.
"No; but dost thou remember why I went with such haste to Nazareth?" he asked.
"To save a life, thou saidst."
"Even so, I failed."
She caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy.
"I failed," he continued. "I went to save a friend who had gone astray after the Nazarene Prophet. But they stoned him before mine eyes."
Her lips moved with a compassionate word, more plainly expressed in all her atmosphere.
"They cast me out of Judea," he went on, "because I was his friend. Wherefore I have tasted the death and have died not; I have suffered for their sin, yet sinned not!"
He had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on. Believing that he might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this understanding woman. At first he felt a little of the embarrassment that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with their comprehension. He left the outline and plunged into detail, and when he had made an end, the glory of the Egyptian sunshine was flooding Alexandria.
At the end of the story, Lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness. She was oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of many sorrows.