The Jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the pavements in gloom. Strips of darker vapor meandering among them showed the course of passages leading with many detours into the great open, where was builded the Synagogue of Alexandria. It was of tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size. The type of architecture was Egypto-Grecian,--repose and refinement, antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a citadel. Here, the forty thousand Jews of Alexandria could gather, nor one rub shoulder against his neighbor. Marsyas looked with no little pride at the triumph of the God of Israel in this stronghold of paganism. What a reproach it must be to them that had departed from the rigor of the Law! He became conscious of the little cross. He drew it forth from its hiding-place and looked at it. It was made of red cedar, slightly elaborated, and the cord passed through a small copper eyelet at the head. To his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a suggestion of suffering and retributive justice. He had not seen one since his last talk with Stephen. The acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for Lydia. Saul of Tarsus should not lay her fair head low! He braced his fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand. At the moment of destruction, his hand was stayed. Stephen had loved it and died for its sake, and Lydia-- His resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back in his bosom, over his heart. At that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was projected against the glowing sky. It was firmly knit and outlined like an infant love. The apparition brought, besides startlement, a prescient significance that made his heart beat. Synagogue and Alexandria dropped out of sight. He saw only the rosy heavens with a beautiful girl marked on them. He arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached. And Marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the earth. He saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm. Here and there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it. One of the morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the girl's arm, would have looked like it. At the threshold of the summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly cocooned herself in the silken vapor. Her eyes, lifted in the movement, fell on Marsyas. With a little start, she unfurled the wrapping and doubled it over her arm.