Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.
"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
"What! Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long? Dost thou not know that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering it, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the night of the Dance of Flora?"
Marsyas looked at her steadily.
"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
"No!" he answered penitently.
"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
"Tell it me, then!"
"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa. So much he loved her, that twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was revived—stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his youth. Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to Cypros, in the night."