the inheritance of
the great Emperor for his descendants later on.

And now there was but her choice to be made, and the imperium would
descend on the noblest head that had ever worn a crown. Dea Flavia felt
the hot blood rush to her cheeks at thought that the choice did rest
with her, that the man who was so proud, so self-absorbed, so
self-willed but a few days ago in the Forum, would receive supreme gifts
through her; that he would be the recipient and she, like the goddess
holding riches, power, honour in her hands; that she would shower them
on him while he knelt--a suppliant first, then a grateful worshipper--at
her feet.

Ambitious? He must be ambitious! Ambition was the supreme virtue of the
Roman patrician! And she had it in her power to satisfy the wildest
cravings of ambition in the one man above all men whom she felt was
worthy of the gifts.

Those were the first thoughts that merged themselves into a coherent
whole in Dea Flavia's head after Caius Nepos and the others had bowed
themselves from out her presence, and there was her sense of the power
of giving, that sense so dear to a woman's heart. As to the thought of
love--of the marriage which this same choice of hers would entail--of
that greatest gift of all--herself--which by her choice she would
promise him--that thought did not even begin to enter her head. She was
so much a girl still--hardly yet a woman--she had thought so little
hitherto, felt so little, lived so little; a semi-deified Augusta,
surrounded by obsequious slaves and sycophantic hangers-on, she had
existed in her proud way, aloof from the bent backs that surrounded
her--loyal to the Caesar, loyal to herself and to her House--but she had
not lived.

There had never been a desire within her that had not been gratified or
that had grown delicious and intense through being thwarted; she had
never suffered, never hoped, never feared. The world was there as a
plaything; she had seen masks but never faces, she had never looked into
a human heart or witnessed human sorrow or joy.

Looking back upon her life, Dea Flavia saw how senseless, how soulless
it had been. Her soul awakened that day in the Forum when first a real,
living man was revealed to her; not a puppet, not a mealy-mouthed
sycophant, not a tortuous self-seeker, just a man with a heart, a will,
a temperament and strange memories of things seen of which he had told
her, though he saw that he angered her.

Since then she had