treated.

"No--no----"

"I should be safe and nobody would know."

And now he raised himself to his feet, and swaying like a drunken man he
turned toward the studio, calling to his guard to follow him. But she
was still between him and that door, between this raving, bloodthirsty
maniac and a helpless man who was lying wounded and in a drugged sleep
on a bed of sickness.

The oracle had not yet finished speaking. The last word still hung in
the air. Her choice had not yet been made: but at this moment when
Caligula and his guard turned toward the studio door, she knew that it
would not be long in the making. Never should that demented tyrant cross
the threshold of her studio and wreak his hatred and revenge upon the
fallen hero. Rather than that should happen she would call to the
people, and hand over the Caesar--her kinsman--to an infuriated mob.
Better that than to deliver a wounded man into the claws of a raging
brute.

Then mayhap the blood of her kinsman would stain her hands for ever;
then, too, no doubt would come horror, remorse and the malediction of
the gods. Then so be it. That would she take upon herself. What must be
suffered, that she would suffer: the torments of remorse would be
infinitesimal compared with the awful sacrilege which the Caesar's hand
would perpetrate, were he allowed access to the praefect of Rome.

And even as the resolve became firmly implanted in her heart, she found
herself murmuring softly words which she had heard in the Forum a very
few days ago.

"I have but one soul and that is in the hand of God!"

Something of the serenity which had then shone from the man's face now
entered into her heart. Horror and excitement fell away from her like a
useless mantle. She felt herself absolutely calm and unswerving in her
determination.

Therefore she did not make a rush for the studio door, she did not with
dramatic gesture interpose her body between it and the Caesar: she merely
put her hand out and let it rest upon his arm.

"I should be safe in there--and nobody would know...." he murmured.

"My slaves would know," she said coldly, "and would betray thee."

"I only fear the men and they need not know," he said eagerly, even
though at her words he had paused and turned back towards her.

"Many of them have seen and heard thee."

"Tell them I have escaped to the Palace of Augustus, through the
crypta."

"They would not believe it--they would know it was not true."

"Ca