The young man looked here and there for a way to enter, but the cunningly extended grove reached from street to street and blocked his passage. Drawing closer he saw that a cordon of soldiers from the city garrison had been thrown around the grove for protection during revels.
At that moment, some one whispered in his ear.
"Thou art in time, white brother. Continue and fail not!"
He looked to catch a glimpse of Vasti, the bayadere, at his side. She was wrapped from head to heel in a murky red silk, like a fire-illumined tissue of smoke. He exclaimed to himself that this was no old woman, nor yet one young. There was too much lissome grace in the sinuous figure, and too much unearthly wisdom in the dark mysterious face.
An instant and she had disappeared like a spirit.
A little dazed he turned to follow his approved course, but stopped, seeing that many humbler folk who had preceded him were halted and driven away. The benefits of the grove were distinctly for those who came with a following and in chariots. The cars of the rich were constantly passing through the line of guards; the numbers were greatly increasing, and presently became congested. The shouts of the impatient waiting ones, the pawing of the horses and the calls of the slaves running hither and thither, added uproar to the lines which closed in around him, until finally he could go neither forward nor backward.
While he turned this way and that for an avenue of escape, he found that he stood beside a shell of a chariot, with Junia and Justin Classicus seated within. Classicus was not given readily to seeing people afoot, and Marsyas stepped hastily out of view. But the Roman woman had already discovered him. He saw her speak to Classicus, and, while he waited in resentment to be pointed out, Classicus leaped lightly out of the car, and, forcing his way through a crush of slaves, got up beside another, whom Marsyas saw to be Agrippa.
Then Junia leaned down to him.
"Come up; thou art safe," she said. "I will not betray thee. What was it, reason or repentance that freed thee?" Her eyes sparkled and her breath came and went quickly between her parted lips.
"An errand," he answered, "and the soldiers will not let me pass."