"Vasti? Nay, but she comes from India; fled from servitude to the Brahmin priesthood to take service with the man who had pitied her once."
"The alabarch?"
"Even so. He bought the gold and onyx plates that he put on the Temple gates, in India, where he saw her and pitied her. So, she fled her owner and sought the world over till she found the alabarch to enslave herself anew."
"So! Small wonder, then, she is annealed like an amphora. Yet I had believed she was a bayadere."
"A bayadere?" Junia repeated.
"A Brahmin dancer, having the peculiarities of an Egyptian almah, a Greek hetæra, and a Pythian priestess, all fused in one. But now that she hath repented, she is rigidly upright and a relentless pursuer of evil-doers."
"Alas!" sighed Junia, still watching Marsyas, "is it not enough to grow old without having to become virtuous?"
Agrippa lifted his eyes to her face, and the look was sufficient comment. But Marsyas had been plunged in his own thoughts and did not hear.
"What is the Feast of Flora?" he asked.
The Roman woman smiled and answered.