"See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said to her. "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow—or thou bringest upon me the pain of killing."
Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the crushing grip.
"Him or me!" she told herself. "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas. "But acquit me of blame. What could I do?"
"I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ARM MADE BARE
Lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to read how Marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch.
It was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung Cypros into paroxysms of suffering and desperation. Now that the unhappy princess had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, Lydia had time for her own thoughts.
It was not the same Lydia that had danced on the Temple of Rannu. Spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical change. The last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid.