om that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped
hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was
revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the
meaning of this strange answer to her questions.

Her eyes had become quite accustomed to the darkness beyond the light.
She could see clearly the powerful figure on bended knees, the wide
shoulders with the bandages disposed over them by the physician for the
healing of those horrible wounds, and the fingers linked together in a
manner which she had never seen before. And now the hands stirred ever
so slightly, the light caught the fingers more directly, and Dea Flavia
saw that--clasped between them--there was a small wooden cross.

And she knew now--all in a moment--that the answer to her questions lay
there before her, not in the man's face, for that she could not see, but
in his clasped hands and in the cross which they held. She knew that it
was because of it--or rather because of that which had gone before, and
of which that little cross was the tangible memory--that he had been
ready to give his life for an enemy, and to give up all ambition and all
pride for the sake of his allegiance to Caesar!

A sigh must have escaped her lips, or merely just the indrawing of her
breath; certain it is that something caused the kneeling man to stir. He
raised his head very slowly, and then looked up straight across the
light--to her.

For one second he remained quite still, on his knees and with that white
vision before him, ghost-like and silent, against the crimson background
of the curtain. Then softly, as a sigh, one word escaped his lips:

"Dea!"

He rose to his feet but already she had fled, noiselessly as she had
come, but swiftly across the studio and the atrium and back to her room,
but even while she fled it seemed to her that on the silent night air
there still trembled the sound of a voice, vibrating with longing and
with passion, mournful as a sigh, appealing as the call of a bird to its
mate:

"Dea!"

CHAPTER XXVI

"There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."--ISAIAH
XLVIII. 22.

When after a few hours of light and troubled sleep Dea Flavia woke to
partial consciousness, it seemed to her as if Phoebus Apollo had been
driving his chariot through a sea of blood; for through the folds of the
curtains over the windows she caught a glimpse of the sky, and it was of
vivid crimson.

The heat was oppres