your mother I am coming; I shall be with her in just an hour."

"Demetrius!" cried the lad trying once more to detain his brother; but
Demetrius freed himself with a powerful wrench and hurried across the
court-yard--gay with flowers and with a fountain in the middle--into
which the apartments of the family opened, his own among the number.

Marcus looked after him sadly; they differed too widely in thought and
feeling ever to understand each other completely, and when they stood
side by side no one would have imagined that they were the sons of one
father, for even in appearance they were strongly dissimilar. Marcus was
slight and delicate, Demetrius, on the contrary, broad-shouldered and
large-boned.

After this parting from his half-brother Marcus betook himself to the
women's rooms where Mary, after superintending the spinning and other
work of the slave-girls, in the rooms at the back, was wont to sit during
the evening. He found his mother in eager conversation with a Christian
priest of advanced age, an imposing personage of gentle and dignified
aspect. The widow, though past forty, might still pass for a handsome
woman: it was from her that her son had inherited his tall, thin figure
with narrow shoulders and a slight stoop, his finely-cut features, white
skin and soft, flowing, raven-black hair. Their resemblance was rendered
all the more striking by the fact that each wore a simple, narrow circlet
of gold-round the head; nay it would have seemed some unusual trick of
Nature's but that their eyes were quite unlike. Hers were black, and
their gaze was shrewd and sharp and sometimes sternly hard; while the
dreamy lustre of her son's, which were blue, lent his face an almost
feminine softness.