the street. Somewhere near him, though he could not see it,
a bosquet of heliotrope and white lilies sent an intoxicating fragrance
into the air.

From far away--where the marshes stretched their limitless expanse
toward the sea--came the melancholy cry of a bittern, calling to his
absent mate.

A vague longing surged in the strong man's heart; he stretched out his
arms up to the dark, starlit canopy above, and a sigh, half impatient,
wholly melancholy, escaped his half-closed lips.

His eyes tried to pierce the marble walls behind which there
bloomed--stately and proud--a beautiful white lily.

Wholly against his will, the man's thoughts flew back to that midday
hour in the Forum, when Dea Flavia had stood before him in all the
exquisite glory of her youth and her loveliness, with that wilful curl
round her chiselled lips and the delicate brows drawn together in a
frown of child-like obstinacy. How beautiful she was and how strangely
pathetic had been her isolation in the midst of so much grandeur.

Even now he thought of her--asleep possibly somewhere in this gorgeous
palace--all alone, despite the thousands of slaves around her;
friendless, despite the might of the House of Caesar of which she was so
proud.

Through one of the tiny windows there peeped a flickering light. Taurus
Antinor marvelled if that were her sleeping-room and, closing his eyes,
pictured her there, resting on embroidered coverlets and cushions, her
fair hair falling in waves around her face at rest; and he wondered
whether in sleep a dewy tear had perchance put a priceless diamond on
her golden lashes.

Bitter thoughts of the men whom he had just quitted surged back in his
heart; they wished to make of this young girl a tool for the fashioning
of their own ambitious schemes.

"The Augusta shall choose one of us for mate, and him we shall ask to
hold the sceptre of Caesar."

One of them for mate! One of those sensuous self-seekers who would use
her as a stepping-stone, and, having obtained supreme power through her
dainty hands, would cast her aside as a useless tool and break her heart
ere she realised even that she had one.

And from the thoughts of the beautiful girl his mind flew back as if
instinctively to that strange phase of his life--those unforgettable
days in Judaea which had seemed like unto the turning point of his whole
existence. He recalled every moment of that memorable day when he had
stood among a multitude on the