The alabarch had turned hurriedly away. But Classicus gazed, as if awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse.
The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly upon the silence in the room.
A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch up quickly.
"Master! master! The prince! The prince!"
"The king, thou untaught rustic!" Agrippa's tones, subdued but mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry.
Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by reactionary emotions, did not move.
But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the opening. Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it passed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesseræ or hunting loans on bad security.
The other was Marsyas.
Classicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to greet a king.
"Count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands toward the new-comers, "that I say that Abraham's radiant visitors were not more welcome than thou!"