With the dim illumination of the city behind him, Marsyas was better able to see his antagonist. As the solid body projected itself at him, like a springing beast, he met it with a raised left arm and a ready right hand. Instantly the two closed and for a brief, fierce moment, fought savagely. But Marsyas discovered that he was far more agile, taller and apparently younger than his assailant, and for a space he had only to fight away the knife that glinted and darted hungrily at his throat. Then, seizing upon his antagonist's first imperfect guard, he delivered a stunning blow over the heart. The heavy body staggered, quivered and collapsed. Expecting to find the passage before him filling with ruffians, Marsyas was astonished to see the way clear and vacant. Without waiting to catch breath Marsyas sprang back in the alley, and, whispering the bayadere's name, found Lydia and the serving-woman only a pace from the spot. Catching Lydia up again, in spite of her protests, he was about to spring over the prostrate body that all but blocked the passage, when his eye fell upon the upturned face. The dim light of the city fell on it. It was Flaccus! For a single moment of surprise and bewilderment, Marsyas stood still. Then very surely it penetrated through his brain that the proconsul had recognized him at the moment of Flora's drop into his arms, and had come to capture him--or to identify the Dancing Flora! He knew that he had not struck a fatal blow and the proconsul's knife lay near. He picked it up. It was bloody. Startled and aghast, he flung the weapon away, and, leaping over the unconscious Roman, fled out of the alley. A torch of pitch, burnt down to a charred knot, with a feeble flame playing over it, was set upon a staff hardly ten paces from the mouth of the passage. It was a dark street, and deserted. The roar of the populace still centered about the square of the Temple of Rannu. Marsyas turned toward the torch, and, as he ran, he saw under its sickly light the figure of a man stretched on the earth. At another step, he tripped over a second fallen body. It moved and groaned. Marsyas put Lydia down. Carrying her through a street cumbered with prostrate men might mean bodily injury for both of them. With a reassuring word, he led her between the head of the obscured man and the feet of the one under the torch, and stumbled at his second step on a contorted shape. Marsyas stopped, to ask himself if the deadly hand that had brought these men low might not await him and his dear charge farther on. Vasti leaned over the one under the torch. Then she sprang up. "Come! Look!" she whispered in excitement. Marsyas hurried to the man, and met at that instant the last conscious light in the eyes of Agrippa.