Meanwhile the army of rabble joined the procession of aristocrats. From every avenue fresh multitudes poured in and added to the thousands. Except for the bounding mimes about them the flamens kept the front of the horde, following with downcast eyes the trail of yellow roses which, Marsyas now knew, led the procession. In the midst of the gigantic hurly-burly he saw with strained eyes and a laboring heart that the light-footed goddess had made a long, deviating flight: that over and over again she doubled on her tracks, but that the detours led with deadly sureness toward the Nazarenes. Impelled now by desperation, he began to work his way toward the front. But he had not reckoned on the immense length of the procession, nor how far he had been absorbed into the heart of it. Only when he was rushed over a slight rise in the street did he know that ahead of him for a great distance was a sea of tossing heads and moving shoulders, and on either side a compact wave wholly filled the two hundred feet of street and washed up against the walls of the houses. The street opened up into an immense square, the last stadium which marked the limit of the Roman influence in the Egyptian settlement. Beyond that, on the water-front, were the streets of the Nazarenes! Praying and struggling, Marsyas hardly noticed the increase of noise beginning at the front and extending back to him and passing until the wild clamor resolved itself into a stunning shout that shook Alexandria and rippled the face of the bay. "Flora! _Dea maxima_! _Solis filia_! Give us joy; give us joy!" The trail of roses had been broken off. Flora had been found. But another roar went up, here and there from the great body there were cries of protest and disappointment: the voice of looters and brawlers that had been deprived of sacrificial blood. There were hisses, shouts of derision and cries to the populace to press on. But the flamens stopped; the great concourse halted by rank and rank until the slackening and final cessation of movement imprisoned the dissenters that were resolved to go on. The main body continued its greetings to the goddess, above the cry of the dissatisfied. At the far side of the open was a tiny squat temple, hardly more than a shrine, to Rannu, the Egyptian goddess of the harvests. On the top of the cornice with the blush lights of the City of Love upon her, stood a girl. Thus lifted into the night sky, her features could not be distinguished, and Marsyas believed that she was mummied, face and figure, in wrappings. He continued to press forward. The small figure on the summit of the Temple stirred, turned half about and slowly raised her arms with a motion that seemed half-command, half-salute to the great expectant crowd below.