"Take it, and forget not that I shall ask payment from the strength of that high place to which this may help thee! The vengeful spirit is not of choice a patient thing! I shall wait--but to achieve mine ends. God prosper thee! If thy servants will lend me each a garment thou shalt have back thy dress once more and I will depart."
"Whither?" asked Agrippa without taking the purse.
"But the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of Saul's marked creatures."
"So I am become as a pestilence," Marsyas said grimly. It was another count against the Pharisee.
"Thou art much beset. Doubt not that Vitellius will seek for thee in En-Gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou be not found. Thou must leave Judea, for the arm of the Sanhedrim is long."
To leave Judea meant to be banished among the Gentiles, to step out of four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen godlessness to meet precarious fortunes. The whole course of his life had been entirely reversed in a few hours. Resolute and strong as the Essene was, his face contracted painfully.
"Remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he were speaking to a child. But in that moment, Marsyas told himself that there would be no returning to his old peace.
"Come with me," Agrippa continued. "I will afford thee protection and thou shalt provide me with funds."
He paused and, taking Marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering vale, sweet with blossoming herbs.
"Look," he said, pointing back toward the east.
The hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of Jerusalem, white and majestic on her heights. The morning blue that encroaches upon the noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere; distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than daylight--it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown.