After he had said it, a sudden rage against Eutychus seized him. The
charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a
brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally
seemed. He took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the
culprit to Agrippa for justice.
He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall. The
startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's
arms, the serving-man cried out. The brown woman answered with a
guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead
of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were
running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.
The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a
Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.
"Lydia! What hath befallen thee? Is she dead?" he cried.
Back of him came a rush of people. Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind
him, Cypros. With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the
details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who
wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.
The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and
exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was
heard. But Marsyas looked at the master of the house. He saw this
time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality,
his religion. In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing
of the Nazarene. Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his
breast. By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen
under the smoky street-torch. In the folds of her white dress,
beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross,
depending from a scarlet cord.
The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take
Lydia from Marsyas' arms. But with the instinctive feeling that none
must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a
motion.
"I will put her down," he said calmly.
Classicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already
turned toward the divan. With a quick movement, he slipped the
crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.
Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly
gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judaeorum with the brown
woman as an attendant. Catching with relief at this bit of foundation
for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.
Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine
and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her
recovery. Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.