Before one, she stopped. "Herein is the prince's other servant," she said, and quickly disappeared. Marsyas opened the door and entering aroused Silas. With a bare explanation that the prince would sail the instant the courier got aboard, he urged the grumbling old man into activity, and went back to the alabarch's presiding-room. He had a moment of waiting--at last a moment to think! He realized that an extreme of some nature had been reached; all his purposes had been brought up to a climax. There was no lingering in Alexandria possible for Agrippa, wounded or well, for Marsyas knew that Flaccus had the Herod's undoing in mind. If Lydia were a Nazarene, Marsyas had now, of a surety, though all Heaven and earth intervened, to bring Saul of Tarsus to death before the Pharisee's dread hand fell upon Lydia for apostasy! For that purpose, he must go to Rome--and leave Alexandria--to return? For his love's sake? He, an Essene? Silas came, bowed, and was dismissed to wait in the street for the moment. And still Marsyas stood. The house was silent and dark. The slumber that overtakes those relieved from a three days' strain enwrapped all under the alabarch's roof. Presently he thought of Cypros, in his search for an excuse for lingering. A lamp on the alabarch's table was ready to be lighted, and, finding the materials for fire-making in the drawer, he lighted it. "Sweet lady," he wrote on a parchment at hand, "the winds favorable to thy lord's departure blow, and he will not awaken thee to the pain of a farewell. Be comforted, be brave, be hopeful; for when he returneth, he bringeth thee a crown. I remember my pledge to thee. "Be thou blessed. "MARSYAS." It was the first letter he had ever written to a woman; he did not dream that he had written so tenderly. He rolled the parchment and addressed it to the princess. There was nothing more to be done. Was he not to see Lydia again? Filled with rebellion and fear, he hurried toward the hall; in the semi-dark, cast by the lamp within the larger room, he saw a small figure slip quickly behind a hanging. She had been waiting to have a stolen look upon him as he went! He caught her in his arms and drew her out into the light. Under its revealing ray, he saw her lovely face smitten down with shame, but he lifted it, to kiss her eyes, her temples and her lips. "Lydia! Lydia! I fear to leave thee!" he whispered. She let her eyes light upon him, to catch his meaning, and when she saw terror for her apostasy and amazement for the thing she had done for the Nazarenes, a sudden misery leaped into her face. She tried to put him back. "Lydia, Lydia!" he begged, feeling the repulse, "dost thou not love me, then?" His tone urged, his eyes pleaded. For a moment, she was silent; then she said, with infinite pain: