hough
the pillow still bore the impress of the head which had rested on it.

The silence was oppressive, for through the thick walls and heavy
curtains of the Augusta's favourite room there penetrated no sound from
without, and she herself stood so still, so still by the door, that she
was sure the beatings of her heart must be heard through that awful
stillness.

Suddenly she started, and her fingers closed more convulsively than
before on the curtain behind her. Imperceptible as the sound of a
swallow on the wing, there came a long-drawn sigh to her ear. Her brow
contracted, her eyes narrowed in a great effort to peer past the light
into the darkness.

On the further side of the couch now and masked by its shadow, she saw
something that was immovable and yet seemed pulsating with life.
Gradually as she peered, that something detached itself from the
surrounding gloom. She saw a bowed head with wealth of tawny hair which
gleamed like copper against the white coverlet, two hands white as the
pillow beside which they rested, whiter still by contrast with the
copper of the hair against them; she saw a pair of broad shoulders, and
a powerful body and limbs that lost themselves in the darkness beyond
the couch.

The face was hidden and the body was quite still. It would have seemed
like that of the dead but for that long sigh, which, intangible though
it was, had broken the silence of the night.

Dea Flavia could not now have moved, even if she would. Her small bare
feet seemed glued to the cold mosaic of the floor, her hand seemed
fastened with clamps of steel to the curtain which it clutched.

She had never seen a man thus kneeling alone in the stillness and in the
gloom. Why should a man kneel thus? and to whom?

Yet she would not have disturbed him, not for all the world. She never
dreamed that he would be awake; she had thought of him lying--as Blanca
said--exhausted from loss of blood.

She had only meant to look on him for a moment, to look into his face as
he slept, to try and read in its wonted harsh lines the secrets of his
soul.

He had rushed to the Caesar trying to protect him, when thousands on
thousands of throats were acclaiming his name as future lord of Rome.
Why?

He had rushed into the arena and risked his life to save a man who two
days ago had insulted him, who--at best--was nothing to him. Why?

These questions she had meant to ask him when he was sleeping: now she
could not ask them fr