"Follow this street unto one intersecting it on the summit of Zion. That will be a broad street and a straight one, terminating on a bridge. Go thence to the hither side of that bridge, pass down the ravine and cross to the other side against Moriah. There thou shalt see a new Greek house. It is the residence of Amaryllis."
Laodice thanked her informant and began the pursuit of the cloudy directions to her destination. Twice before she brought up at the sentry line before the house of the Seleucid, she asked further of other citizens. Many times she met affront, once or twice she perilously escaped disaster. At last, near sunset, she stood before the dwelling-place of the one secure citizen of the Holy City.
A sentry dropped his spear across her path and she had not the countersign to give him. There she and her helpless old attendant stood and looked hopelessly at the refuge denied them.
Presently a man appeared in the colonnade across the front of the house and descending to the sentry line called to him the officer in command. They stood within a few paces of Laodice and she heard the soldier address the man as John, and heard him deliver a report of the day.
When the soldier withdrew to his place, Laodice stepped forward and called to the Gischalan. He stopped, noted that she was beautiful and waited.
"I would speak with the Lady Amaryllis," she hesitated.
"Have you the countersign?" he asked.
"No; else I should have entered. But Amaryllis will know me."
"Enter then," the Gischalan said.
In a moment she was admitted at the solid doors and led into a vestibule. Here, a porter took charge of Momus and showed him into a side passage, while Laodice followed her conductor through a corridor into an interior hall of splendid simplicity. Lounging on an exedra was a young woman in a woolen chiton, barefoot and trifling with the Greek ampyx that bound her golden hair.