There was no ready reply to this, and Lydia's face grew white. "Is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she asked. The alabarch bit his lip and turned his head away. "Granted, then," put in Classicus in his even voice, "that we shall keep the lady in hiding and treat her to no ungentle usage! Now, what will become of Lydia?" The alabarch raised his eyes, filled with fire and desperation. Lydia drooped more and more, and presently she put her hand to her forehead. "Is there nothing to be done?" Classicus persisted calmly. The silence became strained and lengthened to the space of many heart-beats before he spoke again. "Lydia can be hidden, with the princess," he offered finally. Lydia raised her head, and looked at Classicus. Not for her the refuge that was Cypros', for if Flaccus held in truth the secret of her conversion to the Nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers straight upon the Nazarenes all over Egypt. Whatever people sheltered her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads. As Marsyas had been under the oppression of Saul of Tarsus, she had become as a pestilence! She wondered if Classicus realized how thoroughly she understood him. His face did not wear an air of respect for his plan. "It can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at her words. Classicus submitted to her objection at once. "Then," he said, "there is but one other way that I can invent--and this I offer last, because it is dearest to me. I have lands in Greece and favor with the legate there. Flaccus' power can not extend beyond his own dominions. Wilt thou not come to Greece--with me, my Lydia?" Lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected, long ago, that when Classicus had hedged her about, he would offer his hand as her one escape. Drop by drop the color left her face; her lips grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman. The alabarch had turned hurriedly away. But Classicus gazed, as if awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse. The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly upon the silence in the room. A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch up quickly. "Master! master! The prince! The prince!" "The king, thou untaught rustic!" Agrippa's tones, subdued but mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry. Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by reactionary emotions, did not move. But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the opening. Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it passed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesserae or hunting loans on bad security. The other was Marsyas.