Then the distress in Marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned in his black eyes. He straightened himself and stretched out a hand. "I have spoken!" he said. Turning purposefully away, he went back to his place and took up his scroll. For a moment he held it, his eyes on the pavement. Slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll dropped--dropped as if he had done with it. Catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and Saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad. Joel came out of the interior of the building. "I will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered. The Pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and, inclining his head, led the way out. At the threshold of the porch he halted. In the street opposite two young men were walking slowly. One was slight, young, graceful and simply clad in a Jewish smock. The other was Marsyas, the Essene, who went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion. The faces of the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of living, and youthful purity of heart. But the expression of the slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident. As Marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination, not entirely earthly. Joel seized Saul's arm, and held it while the two approached, unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch. "That is he," he whispered avidly. "That is he! Stephen, the apostate!" Stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the Pharisee's eye, returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised his face to Marsyas and so they passed. The pallor on Saul's face deepened. CHAPTER II A PRUDENT EXCEPTION After he had separated from Stephen, Marsyas went to the house of a resident Essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey. At the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let himself in with a murmured formula. In a little time he came forth with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward Gennath Gate. It was not written in the laws of his order that he should make greater preparation for a journey. He had already acquainted himself with the abiding-places of Essenes in villages between Jerusalem and Nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and the provision of the Essene's God, he knew that he would fare well to the hill town of Galilee.