Softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to ascend. At the second step the figure was between him and the window lighting the stairs. Against the lesser darkness and the stars without, he saw Lydia's outlines etched. Noiselessly, she passed up and out of hearing. In his soul, he knew that she had been to the Nazarenes! "To-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "I prepare the prince's ship! There passes a stiff-necked sacrifice to Saul of Tarsus, unless I can bring him low!" The next morning, Justin Classicus received a letter, by a merchant ship from Syria. He retired into his chamber and read it: "O Brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy friend who envieth thy banishment: "I delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him who lined my threadbare purse while in Alexandria, asking usury, long since due, but at the end of that time, I received his letter of a surety. So I made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater haste to answer it by way of propitiation. "I read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor, some with congratulation. By Abraham's beard, it is almost as good to be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only question, I say that I am neither. Thus, am I led up to comment on the facts thou offerest me. "I remember the little Lysimachus, a bit of Ephesian ivory-work, that I augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with brains. But naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarrassment of sense in a woman. Prosper, my Classicus! For if thou art the same elegant paganized son of Abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts are as many as thy usurers are scarce. Half a million drachmae; demand no less a dowry than that, my Classicus! "But here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet! A manumitted slave, a cumbrous yokel of an Essene, hath given thee troublous nights, because the lady's eyes soften in his presence! Thou scented son of Daphne; Athene's darling; Venus' latest joy! To let a Phidian colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee! "Thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his! Again, she stammered under his look! And yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak about her, and lingered getting his arm away! And all these things thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy plaint to me, eight hundred miles away! "By the philippics of Jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support!