When at last Phoebicius dropped his weary arm and breathlessly repeated his question, the ill-used man replied, “I told you before I do not know, and therefore I cannot reveal it.”

Up to this moment Petrus, though he had felt strongly impelled to rush to the rescue of his severely handled fellow-believer, had nevertheless allowed the injured husband to have his way, for he seemed disposed to act with unusual mildness, and the Alexandrian to be worthy of all punishment; but at this point Dorothea’s request would not have been needed to prompt him to interfere.

He went up to the centurion, and said to him in an undertone, “You have given the evil-doer his due, and if you desire that he should undergo a severer punishment than you can inflict, carry the matter—­I say once more—­before the bishop.  You will gain nothing more here.  Take my word for it, I know the man and his fellow-men; he actually knows nothing of where your wife is hiding, and you are only wasting the time and strength which you would do better to save, in order to search for Sirona.  I fancy she will have tried to reach the sea, and to get to Egypt or possibly to Alexandria; and there—­you know what the Greek city is—­she will fall into utter ruin.”

“And so,” laughed the Gaul, “find what she seeks—­variety, and every kind of pleasure.  For a young thing like that, who loves amusement, there is no pleasant occupation but vice.  But I will spoil her game; you are right, it is not well to give her too long a start.  If she has found the road to the sea, she may already—­Hey, here Talib!” He beckoned to Polykarp’s Amalekite messenger.  “You have just come from Raithu; did you meet a flying woman on the way, with yellow hair and a white face?”

The Amalekite, a free man with sharp eyes, who was highly esteemed in the senator’s house, and even by Phoebicius himself, as a trustworthy and steady man, had expected this question, and eagerly replied: 

“At two stadia beyond el Heswe I met a large caravan from Petra, which rested yesterday in the oasis here; a woman, such as you describe, was running with it.  When I heard what had happened here I wanted to speak, but who listens to a cricket while it thunders?”

“Had she a lame greyhound with her?” asked Phoebicius, full of expectation.

“She carried something in her arms,” answered the Amalekite.  “In the moonlight I took it for a baby.  My brother, who was escorting the caravan, told me the lady was no doubt running away, for she had paid the charge for the escort not in ready money, but with a gold signet-ring.”

The Gaul remembered a certain gold ring with a finely carved onyx, which long years ago he had taken from Glycera’s finger, for she had another one like it, and which he had given to Sirona on the day of their marriage.