He halted for the night at a little village and sought the hospitality of an Essene hermit that lived on the outskirts. But in the night, terror for Stephen, of that unknown kind which is conviction without evidence and irrefutable, seized him. He endured until the early watches of the morning and took the road to Nazareth while the stars still shone.
He had forgotten his fellow wayfarers of the previous afternoon until their camels, speeding like the wind, overtook him beyond Mt. Ephraim. In a vapor of flying scarves he caught again a glimpse of the flower face turned his way.
Then for the first time in his life he reviled his poverty that forced him to walk when the life of the much-beloved depended upon despatch. Nazareth, clinging like a wasps' nest under the eaves of its chalky hills, was many leagues ahead, and the sun must set and rise again before he could climb up its sun-white streets.
His hope was not strong. His plan had won such little respect from him that he had not ventured to propose it to Stephen. It was extreme sacrifice for him to make, a sacrifice lifelong in effect, and in that he based his single faith in its success. Stephen loved him and would not persist in the fatal apostasy, if he knew that his friend, the Essene, was to deny himself ambition and fame for Stephen's sake.
He would get his patrimony of the old master Essene who held it in trust for him, formally give over his instruction, bind himself to the perpetual life of husbandry and seclusion, and then tell Stephen what he had done and why he had done it.
Everything else but the appeal to Stephen's love for him had failed, and he had shrunk from forcing that trial.
But Saul had meant to go to the Synagogue at once; there were innumerable chances that he was already too late.
At noon he came upon the party of travelers again. A fringed tent had been pitched under a cluster of cedars and the slaves were putting away the last of the meal. He saw now as he hurried by that there was a spare and elegant old man, in magistrate's robes, reclining with singular grace on a pallet of rugs before the lifted side of the tent. The girl sat near. He noted also that the master and the slaves fell silent as he approached and looked at him with interest.
But he sped on, forgetting that it was the noon and that he was hungry, heated and weary, and remembering only that the time and the distance were deadly long.
There was the soft pad-pad of a camel-hoof behind him and a servant of the aristocrat that he had passed drew up at his side. With a light leap the man dropped from the beast's neck and bowed low. The ease of his salaam and the purity of his speech were strong evidences of training among the loftiest classes of the time. The attitude asked permission to address the Essene.