In the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that grasped it. Presently Marsyas dropped it. Then the night-wind, rising from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the Herod standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor. He got out of sight hurriedly.
After the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall. Before it, along the pavement, something came skittering out of Marsyas' cubiculum. Agrippa looked at it. It was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed by the tense grip of fingers.
Agrippa waited. After a slight movement within, silence fell again, and was not thereafter broken. The prince's eyes fell on the charred writing. It was almost at his feet. His fine head dropped to one side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a little and picked up the parchment. A moment later, in his own apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp.
Only a word here and there, at the end held in Marsyas' fingers, was legible, but Agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the identity, as he thought, of the one addressed.
"— me for loving thee — my punishment —. Yet —— sin against my teachi —— Willingly for thy sake ——— but to pretend —— continue my —— against —— which threatens thee. Have I lost — soul for a caprice —— and beseech levity — to lov — me? the pointing finger —— of sel — scorn! An outcast from Heaven —— truant from hell, haunting earth in search of thee for ever!—SYAS."
Agrippa's eyes sobered.
"Junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself. "I shall make an end of this!"