"I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he said. "I shall not betray him."
"Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the white gate, at the end of the street?"
Marsyas assented.
"Knock," she said.
He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage.
With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open.
A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate. There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the property wall on each side. And there was a seat of tamarind with fallen leaves upon it.
"Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor in his voice. Whither had his courage departed?
"Enter," the woman said.
Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman toward the bower of ipomoea.