“Take back those words!” cried Marcus, beside himself and clenching his fist.  “But that is just like you!  Your impure eyes and heart defile purity itself, and see spots even in the sun.  Nothing is too bad for a ‘singing girl,’ I know.  But that is just the marrow of the matter; it is from that very curse that I mean to save her.  If you can accuse her of anything, speak; if not, and if you do not want to appear a base slanderer in my eyes, take back the words you have just spoken!”

“Oh!  I take them back of course,” said Demetrius indifferently.  “I know nothing of your beauty beyond what she has herself said to me and you and Cynegius and his Secretaries—­with her pretty, saucy eyes.  But the language of the eye, they say, is not always to be depended on; so take it as unsaid.  And, if I understood you rightly, you do not even know where the singers are hiding?  If you have no objection, I will help you to seek them out.”

“That is as you please,” answered Marcus hotly.  “All your mockery will not prevent my doing my duty.”

“Very right, very right,” said his brother.  “Perhaps this damsel is unlike all the other singing-girls with whom I used so often to spend a jolly evening in my younger days.  Once, at Barca, I saw a white raven—­but perhaps after all it was only a dove.  Your opinion, in this case, is at any rate better founded than mine, for I never thought twice about the girl and you did.—­But it is late; till to-morrow, Marcus.”

The brothers parted for the night, but when Demetrius found himself alone he walked up and down the room, shaking his head doubtfully.  Presently, when his body-slave came in to pack for him, he called out crossly: 

“Let that alone—­I shall stay in Alexandria a few days longer.”

Marcus could not go to bed; his brother’s scorn had shaken his soul to the foundations.  An inward voice told him that his more experienced senior might be right, but at the same time he hated and contemned himself for listening to its warnings at all.  The curse that rested on Dada was that of her position; she herself was pure—­as pure as a lily, as pure as the heart of a child, as pure as the blue of her eyes and the ring of her voice.  He would obey the angel’s behest!  He could and he must save her!

In the greatest excitement he went out of the house, through the great gate, into the Canopic way, and walked on.  As he was about to turn down a side street to go to the lake he found the road stopped by soldiers, for this street led past the prefect’s house where Cynegius, the Emperor’s emissary, was staying; he had come, it was said, to close the Temples, and the excited populace had gathered outside the building, during the afternoon, to signify their indignant disapprobation.  At sundown an armed force had been called out and had dispersed the crowd; but it was by another road that the young Christian at length made his way to the shore.