She wore the classic Greek chiton of white wool without relief of color or ornament, a garb which, by its simplicity, intensified the first impression that it was a child that stood in the archway. She was a little below average height, with almost infantile shortening of curves in her pretty, stanch outlines. But the suppleness of waist and the exquisite modeling of throat and wrist were signs that proved her to be of mature years.
Her hair was of that intermediate tint of yellow-brown which in adult years would be dark. It fell in girlish freedom, rough with curls, a little below her shoulders. There was a boyishness in the noble breadth of her forehead, full of front, serene almost to seriousness, and marked by delicate black brows too level to be ideally feminine. Her eyes were not prominent but finely set under the shading brow, large of iris, like a child's, and fair brown in color. In their scrutiny was not only the wisdom of years but the penetration of a sage. Though her tips were not full they were perfectly cut, and redder than the heart of any pomegranate that grew in the alabarch's garden.
But it was not these certain signs of strength which engaged Agrippa. Beyond the single glance to note how much the girl had developed in four years he gave his attention to certain physical characteristics which called upon his long experience with women to catalogue.
As she stood in the archway, the prince had let his glance slip down to her feet, shod in white sandals, and her ankles laced about with white ribbon. One small foot upbore her weight, the other unconsciously, but most daintily, poised on a toe. She swayed once with indescribable lightness, but afterward stood balanced with such preparedness of young sinew that at a motion she could have moved in any direction. Foremost in summing these things, Agrippa observed that she was wholly unconscious of how she stood.
"Terpsichore!" he said to himself, "or else the goddess hath withdrawn the gift of dancing from the earth!"
"Enter, Lydia, and know the proconsul, the noble Flaccus," the alabarch said. The girl raised her eyes to the proconsul's face and salaamed with enchanting grace. Flaccus checked a fatherly smile. He would wait before he patronized a girl-child of uncertain age.
"And this," the alabarch went on, "thou wilt remember as our prince, Herod Agrippa."
"Alas! sweet Lydia," Agrippa said, fixing soft eyes upon her. "Must I be introduced? Am I in four years forgotten?"
"No, good my lord," she answered in a voice that was mellow with the music of womanhood—a voice that almost startled with its abated strength and richness, since the illusion of her youth was hard to shake off, "thou art identified by thy sweet lady!"
Agrippa stroked his smooth chin and Flaccus shot an amused glance at him. Meanwhile the girl had opened her arms to Cypros. The children, one by one, greeted her. The alabarch went on.