"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the group. "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest to show the marks of experience. Tell us what happened."
Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation. If he frankly told the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril. If he evaded, Eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment, might wreck a fabrication by a word. But the young man made no appreciable hesitation in answering. He caught the charioteer's eye and held it fixedly while he spoke.
"I know little," he said. "From the ship we came up a certain street, where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers. So disorderly the crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the guiltiest one. Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus, the lady.
"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we stayed to save the lady from the rioters. This done we came hither. That is all."
"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.
The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.
"Sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.
Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.
"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.
"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."
"Who art thou?" he asked. "I met thee once, it seems."
"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him, is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my friend and companion. Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable acquaintance."
Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer, took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.
"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion. "Blessed be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"
Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast a beseeching look at the prince. The prince smiled.
