"Well for thee my grandsire never knew," Agrippa put in, leaning against one of the cestophori which guarded a blank panel in the wall.
"He never knew; but I would have died before I would give over the memory of it. She was slight, willowy, with the eyes of an Attic antelope, yet braver and more commanding than any woman-eye that ever bewitched me. Her mouth--Praxiteles would have turned from Lais' lips to hers."
Agrippa's hand slid down the side of the cestophorus and fumbled a little within the edge of the molding.
"Her hair was loose," the old man went on, "the sole drapery of her bosom--a very cloud of night loomed into filaments--"
An inert, moldy breath reached Marsyas. He turned his head. The panel between the cestophori was gone and a square of darkness yawned its miasma into the hall.
The prince made a lightning movement; noiselessly the two servants dived into the blackness; Marsyas followed; after him, the prince.
An eclipsing wall began to slide between them and the hail they had left.
"Her arms were languidly lifted--arms that for whiteness shamed this marble--" the old man was saying as the panel glided back into place and shut them in darkness.
"Ow!" Agrippa whispered in delight, "he tells that story better every year!"
Agrippa crowded past the three that had preceded him into the black passage and, whispering a command to follow, led on. They kept track of him by the sound of his shoes on the stone, but the absolute darkness and the unfamiliar path made their steps uncertain and slow. Frequently the sure footfall before them receded and in fear of losing their guide they stumbled forward in nervous haste.
Presently the darkness about them lifted; the sensation was not that light had entered in, but that the darkness had simply failed in strength. There was a perceptible increase in temperature and the atmosphere, changing from a chill, became muggy and oppressive. Marsyas, drawing in a full breath in search of freshness, told himself that this was the original air of chaos, penned in at the hour of creation.
The floor under his feet became irregular, the instinctive realization that a roof was imminent overhead, passed, and, when the darkness became sufficiently feeble, they discovered that they were following through an immense chamber. Light came in through air-holes in the rock above.