Marsyas repressed the impatient word that arose to his lips and followed after the deliberate, moving blockade.
The rank of the departing strangers did not encourage the city rabble to follow, and as the escort kept close to the head of the procession the hindmost camel was directly before Marsyas and the occupant of the howdah in his view. Over head and shoulders the full skirts of a vitta fell, erasing outline, and, contrasting the stature with that of the attending servant, he concluded that the small traveler was a child.
Under the dripping shade and chill of the ancient Gate they passed and out into the road worn into a trench through the rock and dry gray earth and on to the oval pool which supplied Hippicus, where a halt for a final farewell was made. Again Marsyas was delayed, and for a much longer time. He might have climbed out of the sunken roadway and passed around the obstruction, but the banks above were lined with clamoring mendicants, women and lepers, and he could not escape ceremonial defilement that might more seriously delay his journey.
Meanwhile the courtly leave-taking progressed with dignified sloth. Gradually Sadducee, priest and Pharisee moved one by one from the departing aristocrat. At the hindmost camel the Pharisees stopped not at all, but saluting without looking at the traveler, the priests merely raised their hands in blessing; but the Sadducees to a man salaamed profoundly, and passed on if they were old, or lingered uncertainly if they were young.
A little flicker of enlightenment showed in the young Essene's brilliant eyes, an angry tension in his lips straightened their curve and he drew himself up indignantly. The young aristocrats tarried and laughed his precious time away with a woman! That was the traveler in the last howdah! Twice and thrice the time they had spent speeding the rest of the party they consumed bidding the woman farewell, and every moment carried danger nearer to Stephen.
Then an old voice, refined and delicate as the note of an ancient lyre, lifted in laughing protest from the front, the young men laughed, responding, but moved away to their chairs, the camel swung out into a rapid walk, and crying farewells the party separated.
With abating irritation Marsyas moved after them. At the intersection of the first road, he would pass these travelers and hasten on.
A breeze from the hills cut off the smell of the city with a full stream of country freshness. Marsyas lifted his head and drew in a long breath that was almost a sigh. His first trouble weighed heavily upon him and its triple nature of distress, heart-hurt and apprehension, sensations so new and so near to nature as to be at wide variance with anything Essenic, moved him into a mood essentially human. Then an exhalation from aft the fragrant spring-flowered groves stole into the pure air about him, bewildering, sweet, and through it, as harmoniously as if the perfume had taken tone, a distant hill bird sent a single stave of liquid notes. The small figure in the howdah at that moment turned and looked back, and Marsyas for the first time in his life gazed straight into the eyes of a beautiful girl.
Spring-fragrance, bird-song and flower-face were harmony too perfect for Essenism to discountenance. Without the slightest discomposure, and absolutely unconscious of what he was doing, Marsyas gazed and listened until the vitta fell hastily over the face, the bird flew away and the garden incense died.
He passed just then the intersecting road, but he continued after the last camel. He walked after that through many drifts of fragrance, and many hill birds sang, but he knew without looking that the flower face was not turned back toward him again.