"I had prepared a path for escape; I was armed, and watching!"
"Did—did she expect me?" he asked after silence.
"No."
Then she had done this thing for him. Oh, for the safe refuge of the alabarch's musky halls that he might harken to the sweet distress in his soul and tell her of it!
Without further event, they reached the alabarch's house and the bayadere, producing keys, let her charges into the servant's entry beneath the porch. Lydia instantly disappeared, but Vasti in obedience to a word from Marsyas conducted him through the well-beloved chambers to the corridor lined by the sleeping-rooms of the servants.
Before one, she stopped.
"Herein is the prince's other servant," she said, and quickly disappeared.
Marsyas opened the door and entering aroused Silas. With a bare explanation that the prince would sail the instant the courier got aboard, he urged the grumbling old man into activity, and went back to the alabarch's presiding-room.
He had a moment of waiting—at last a moment to think!
He realized that an extreme of some nature had been reached; all his purposes had been brought up to a climax. There was no lingering in Alexandria possible for Agrippa, wounded or well, for Marsyas knew that Flaccus had the Herod's undoing in mind. If Lydia were a Nazarene, Marsyas had now, of a surety, though all Heaven and earth intervened, to bring Saul of Tarsus to death before the Pharisee's dread hand fell upon Lydia for apostasy! For that purpose, he must go to Rome—and leave Alexandria—to return? For his love's sake? He, an Essene?