us Antinor had straightened out his tall figure. For a moment he
looked down with bitter scorn on the prostrate figure of his vanquished
foe. The awed silence which his strange words of a while ago had imposed
upon the others, still hung upon them all. They stood about in groups,
whispering below their breath, and the slaves were huddled up one
against the other in the distant corners of the room. An air of mystery
still hung over the magnificent triclinium, its convivial board, its
abandoned couches, over the vases of murra and crystal and the fast
dying roses. It seemed as if some personality--great, majestic,
divine--had passed through the marble hall and that the sound of sacred
feet still echoed softly along its walls.

It almost seemed as if there clung a radiance in that shadowy corner
where the eyes of an enthusiast had sought and found the memory of the
Divine Teacher; and that in the fume-laden air there lingered the odour
of the sacrifice offered by a rough, untutored heart to the Man Who had
spoken unforgettable words seven years ago in Galilee.

CHAPTER X

"That the world through Him might be saved."--ST. JOHN III. 17.

Taurus Antinor had bidden farewell to his host, and to the other guests
and then departed.

Not another word had been spoken on the subject of the Caesar or of his
probable successor. The conspirators, somewhat sobered, had allowed the
praefect to go without attempting further effort to gain him to their
cause. They had had their answer. Though many of them did not quite
understand the full depth of its meaning, yet were they satisfied that
it was final. They bade him farewell quietly and without enmity; somehow
the thought of their murderous plan had momentarily fled from their
mind, and the quarrel between Hortensius Martius and the praefect of
Rome seemed to have been the most important event of the day.

Taurus Antinor emerged alone from the peristyle of Caius Nepos' house.
An army of slaves belonging to the various guests were hanging about the
vestibule, talking and laughing amongst themselves and feasting on the
debris from the patricians' table, brought out to them by servitors from
within; some forty litters encumbered the floor, but Antinor, paying no
heed to these, passed through the crowd of jabbering men and women and
made his way across to the steps which led upwards to the street.

The day was done, had been done long ago; already the canopy of the
stars was str