It was Emmaus' habit to find strangers at
its door.
Julian, with natural desire to be first on this perilous ground and
away from the side of the man who had defeated him and laughed at him,
rode up to the door. The villager, seeing the traveler stop, gazed at
him.
Julian had about him an air of blood and breeding first to be remarked
even before his features. The grace of his bearing and the excellence
of his bodily condition were highly aristocratic. His height was good,
his figure modestly athletic as an observance of fine form rather than
a preparation for the arena. He was simply dressed in a light blue
woolen tunic. A handkerchief was bound about his head. His forehead
was very white and half hidden by loose, curling black locks that
escaped with boyish negligence from his head-dress. His eyes were
black, his cheeks tanned but colorless, his mouth mirthful and red but
hard in its outlines. Clean-shaven, lithe, supple, he did not appear
to be more than twenty-two. But there was an even-tempered cynicism
and sophistication in the half-droop of his level lids, indifference,
hauteur and self-reliance in the uplift of his chin. His soul was
therefore older, more seasoned and set than the frame that housed it.
Now there was considerable agitation in his manner, enough to make him
sharp in his speech to the villager.
"Is there a khan in Emmaus?" he demanded.
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