"Death intervened," he whispered, "to save thee from Cæsar!"
Agrippa started and drew his hands away with a prescient terror in the movement.
"I will not pursue the man," he said; "I will not search for him!"
"Thou hast kept thy word, lord," Marsyas said, "and I go hence carrying trust in one more fellow man in my heart. May my God supply all thy need according to His riches in glory, by Jesus Christ!"
Agrippa's eyes which had all this time rested in fascination on Marsyas' face, flashed now with understanding. Marsyas was a Nazarene! The admission reassured him; set aside the astonishment at the young man's unusual behavior; and lessened the fear he had felt in the suggestion that drew a parallel between Cæsar's end and his own, to come. But Lydia was now kneeling before him, with glistening eyes, to kiss his hand, and Cypros was speaking.
"But thou gatherest peril yet about thee, Marsyas," she insisted. "Is the hazardous life, then, so inviting that thou hadst liefer be wrong than be safe?"
"No, lady; peace is no sweeter to my brethren, the Essenes, than it is to me. So I have put out my hand and possessed it. Think of us, henceforth, as the children of peace, not peril."
Agrippa shook his head.
"It hath consumed two years to establish it," he said conclusively, "and not until the last moment is it revealed that thou art a dreamer, Marsyas. Thou hast been an Essene, which is too strait an ambition to be practicable; thou didst cherish a love for a man, so deep that its bereavement engendered a hate that no man should feel, unless a woman were won from him or a fortune destroyed; thou wast urged by it into extreme acts—into selling thyself, into following me to the end of the world, into putting thyself between me and death—that I might help thee satisfy that hate! And now, the hour fallen, a new fancy hath engulfed thee, heart, head and soul—which bids thee forget thy rancor, defend thine enemy, and live in perpetual peril of destruction! Thou art a dreamer—though thy front be Jovian and thy steps like Mars!"
Marsyas laid his hand on Lydia's head, as she still knelt beside him.