"I pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me where Ananias, the Nazarene, dwelleth?" The woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face. She was a Greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm. "Art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired by the unhappy. "I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he said. "I shall not betray him." "Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the white gate, at the end of the street?" Marsyas assented. "Knock," she said. He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage. With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open. A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate. There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the property wall on each side. And there was a seat of tamarind with fallen leaves upon it. "Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor in his voice. Whither had his courage departed? "Enter," the woman said. Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman toward the bower of ipomoea. Within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and disappeared through a door at the end of the room. A moment later, the tall spare figure of the pastor of Ptolemais and of Rhacotis emerged from the interior. Marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips. He clasped his hands and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the Nazarene. Without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first movement of surprise, Ananias reopened the door that he had closed behind him and signed to the young man to pass in. Marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center under a hanging lamp. There, with her head bright under the rays, sat Lydia. Her face was toward him when he entered. She flung down the skein of wool she was winding and sprang up. But the look on Marsyas' face arrested her cry. One glance of supreme examination and her large eyes kindled with sudden triumph. She came to him as if more than distance between them and danger had been overcome. Marsyas swept her into his arms and folded her to his heart. "No more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine own!" Trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her. "O my Marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust than to live in thy love without it! Blessed, thrice blessed the hour which gave me both!"