"Hath he far to go?" he asked.
"Yes—far!"
Classicus waited serenely for Marsyas' answer. In that composure Marsyas read unconcern, which the Essene interpreted as hopelessness for his own cause.
"So long as we abide in Egypt, we are a peril," he replied. "Even now we have delayed too long!"
He extended his hand to Lydia, and slowly, she put her own into it. The touch of the small fingers played too strongly upon his self-control. He released them hurriedly and strode toward the vestibule.
But at the threshold, indecision and astonishment and acute realization of the meaning of the thing he was doing seized him. He whirled about. Classicus stood beneath the cluster of lamps, his face alight with triumphant superciliousness. Even under Marsyas' eye the expression did not alter. Lydia seemed to have shrunk; her hands clasped before her were wrung about each other in an agony of restraint, but the pitiful appeal in her eyes was all that Marsyas saw.
In an instant he was again at her side, his heart speaking in his face.
"Thou wearest yet the free locks of maidenhood," he said, in a voice so smooth and low that it chilled her, "perchance thou wilt tell me ere I depart if thou art to marry—this man?"
For a moment there was silence; Marsyas heard his mad heart beating, but if Classicus felt apprehension, there was no display of it on his face. Then Lydia raised her head.
"No," she said, in a voice barely audible.