ster in his restless walk up and down the room.

Outside greater darkness had gathered, heavy clouds obscured the light,
and the gorgeous figure of the Caesar now and then vanished into the dark
angles of the room, reappearing a moment later like some threatening
ghoul that comes and goes, blown by the wind which foretells the coming
storm.

After a while Caligula paused in his walk and stood close beside her,
looking as straight as he could into her pale face.

"No thought of marriage?" he repeated, with one of his mirthless laughs,
"no thought, mayhap, of the husband whom I would choose for thee? No
doubt there is even now lurking somewhere in this palace a young gallant
who alone has the right to aspire to Dea Flavia's grace."

"My lord is pleased to jest," she said coolly, "and knows as well as I
do that no patrician can boast of a single favour obtained from me."

"Then 'tis on a slave thou hast chosen to smile," he said roughly.

Then as she did not deign to make reply to this insult, he continued:

"Come! Art mute that thou dost not speak when Caesar commands?"

"What does my lord wish me to say?"

"Hast a lover, girl?"

"No, my lord."

"Thou liest."

"Did I deceive my lord in this, then had I not the courage to look
boldly in the Caesar's face."

"Bah!" he said with a snarl, "I mistrust that maidenly reserve which men
call pride, and I, clever coquetry. The women of Rome have realised,
fortunately by now, that they are the slaves of their masters, to be
bought and sold as he directs. The wife must learn that she is the slave
of her husband, the daughter that she belongs to the father; the women
of the House of Caesar that they belong to me."

"It is a hard lesson my lord would teach to one half of his subjects."

"It is," he said with brutal cynicism, "but I like teaching it. I hope
to live long enough--nay! I mean to live long enough--to establish a
marriage market in Rome, where the lords of the earth can buy what women
they want openly, for so many sesterces, as they can their cattle and
their pigs."

She recoiled from the man a little at these words and a blush of shame
slowly rose to her cheek. But she retorted calmly:

"The gods do speak through Caesar's mouth and he frames the laws even as
they wish."

Her words flattered his egregious vanity which had even as great, if not
a greater, hold upon him than his tyrannical temper. He knew that to
this proud girl he was as a god, and that