She went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the guest. But Classicus lingered. The alabarch was not like to be telling him the account of Agrippa's latest misfortune.
She put away Marsyas' letter and gazed at the Synagogue immersed in the golden flood of Egyptian sunshine. She had not ceased to love it, nor to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed Jesus of Nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates. Saul of Tarsus whom she had feared for Marsyas' sake was a hidden menace now in its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up only so long as she hid in deceit. She felt unutterably lonely and friendless.
Presently Classicus came up unannounced. She knew at a glance that he had learned from some source of Agrippa's misfortune, and wondered for a moment if her father had forgotten Marsyas' charge.
"Alexandria hath heard of Agrippa's disaster," he began, as he seated himself beside her, "and I came to offer my consolation and my aid."
Then Flaccus already had the news!
"I would thou couldst aid us, Justin. Not now is anything more precious than help, and nothing less possible."
"And to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that I deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, Lydia. What does it mean?"
"That I grow older, wiser, sadder—and less fortunate."
"Thou shouldst study the philosophy of the Nazarenes," he declared. "I find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it."
"Does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she asked, looking away.