"The Essene hath heard of the Pharisee Saul's apostasy and hath come to demand his punishment of me. Behold me grant it, with kingly gravity. It will attach the extremists to me all the more, for I hear the Sicarii are wanting the heretic's blood! And he fetches the little Lysimachus with him! Aha! En-Gadi hath lost—that which it never had, in truth."
He looked at his hands and at his garments.
"Nay, it will be just as well if the lady sees me looking my best!"
He slammed the door of his cabinet behind him, locked it and hurried away in the direction of the royal wardrobe.
In an hour he ascended the dais in robes of purple velvet with the Pharisee fringes in gold. Cypros, filled with pleasurable anticipations, was beside him in the garments that Mariamne had worn. The king cast an eye over the carpeting, the canopy and the gorgeous dressing of his throne and said to Cypros:
"Perpol! the place reeks with the smell of newness! But be not conscious of it! Perchance none will guess that the hands of the upholsterers are still warm on the fabric."
The genuflexions of the series of attendants at the archway and beyond marked the coming of Marsyas and Lydia. A Jewish chamberlain within the hall bent to the pavement and announced to the king that his visitors approached. Agrippa relaxed even more comfortably in his throne and let his scepter fall into his lap. But Cypros, more conscious of her debt to those who visited her now than of her state, smiled and moved forward and looked down the long chamber for the first glimpse of them.
But it was not the Marsyas and the Lydia she had expected to see. Even to one of her unready perceptions, the change upon the two was strangely marked.
They came side by side, both in the simple white garments of the ceremonially clean, but Marsyas' head was uncovered and Lydia's locks were wholly unbound, after the custom of Jewish brides. Within a few paces of the throne-dais they stopped. With all her former grace, Lydia sank to her knees, but Marsyas, after the oriental salaam, stood beside her.
Cypros, with her eyes shining, and after an eager glance at her lord, arose and stepped to the edge of the dais. Then Agrippa got up, with his purple trailing effectively, and came down from his high seat, and approached his guests.