in the wake of
the setting sun."

But Dea Flavia's interest in the narrative seemed suddenly to have
flagged. She stretched her arms, yawned ostentatiously, and with the
movement of a fretful child she threw herself once more flat upon the
couch, with her elbows in the cushions and her face buried in her hands.

With some impatience she snatched the mirror from the young slave's
hand, and then she put it on the pillow and looked straight down into
it, whilst her hair fell like golden curtains down each side of her
face.

"Go on, Licinia," she said with curt indifference.

"There is but little more to tell," said the old woman, who with stolid
placidness had resumed her former occupation, and once more rubbed the
white shoulders with the sweet-smelling unguent; "nor could I tell thee
how it all happened. A sort of tempestuous whirlwind seemed to sweep
before my eyes, and the next thing that I saw clearly was an enormous
figure clad in a gorgeous tunic, and standing high, high above me on the
very top of the marble rostrum beside the bronze figure of the god. It
was the praefect. From where I stood, palsied with fear, I could see his
face, dark now as the very thunders of Jupiter, his hair around his head
gleamed like copper in the sun; but what caused my very blood to freeze
and the marrow to stiffen in my bones, was to see his two mighty arms
high above his head holding the body of my lord Hortensius. He looked up
there like some god-like giant about to hurl an enemy down from the
mountains of Olympus. The rostrum stands a terrific height above the
pavement of the Forum; the marble balustrades, the outstanding
gradients, the carvings along its sides, all stood between that inert
body held up aloft by those gigantic arms and the flagstones below where
Death, hideous and yawning, seemed to be waiting for its prey. And still
the praefect did not move, and I could see the muscles of his arms
swollen like cords and the sinews of his hands almost cracking beneath
the weight of my lord Hortensius' body."

Licinia paused and passed a wrinkled hand over her moist forehead. She
was trembling even now at the recollection of what she had seen. The
beautiful figure lying stretched out upon the couch had not moved in a
single one of its graceful lines. The tiny head beneath its crown of
gold was bent down upon the mirror.

"Couldst see my lord Hortensius' face?" came in the same cold tones of
indifference from behind the veil