llowed the priest who had
taken up the lamp to pass, with his two companions, into a small, low
chamber, and then quickly and noiselessly closed behind them, leaving
no trace of an opening.

The small chamber, now simply adorned by a tall wooden crucifix, a
fall-stool, and a few plain Christian symbols on a golden background,
had evidently, as the cushioned shelf which ran round the walls showed,
served for those small banquets of one or two guests, whose
unrestrained comfort Horace has so often celebrated in song. At the
time of which I speak it was the private chamber in which the
archdeacon brooded over his most secret priestly or worldly plans.

Cethegus silently seated himself on the _lectus_ (a small couch),
throwing the superficial glance of a critic at a Mosaic picture
inserted into the opposite wall. While the priest was occupied in
pouring wine from an amphora with large curving handles into some cups
which stood ready, and placing a metal dish of fruit on the bronze
tripod table, Rusticiana stood opposite Cethegus, measuring him with an
expression of astonishment and indignation.

Scarcely forty years of age, this woman showed traces of a rare--and
rather manly--beauty, which had suffered less from time than from
violent passions. Here and there her raven-black braids were streaked
with white, not grey, and strong lines lay round the mobile corners of
her mouth.

She leaned her left hand on the table, and meditatively stroked her
brow with her right, while she gazed at Cethegus. At last she spoke.

"Tell me, tell me, Cethegus, what power is this that you have over me?
I no more love you. I ought to hate you. I do hate you. And yet I must
involuntarily obey you, like a bird under the fascinating eye of a
snake. And you place my hand, _this_ hand, in that of that miserable
man! Say, you evil-doer, what is this power?"

Cethegus was inattentively silent. At last, leaning back, he said:
"Habit, Rusticiana, habit."

"Truly, 'tis habit! The habit of a slavery that has existed ever since
I can remember. It was natural that as a girl I should admire the
handsome son of our neighbours; that I believed in your love was
excusable, did you not kiss me? And who could--at that time--know that
you were incapable of loving anything--even yourself? That the wife of
Boethius did not smother the mad passion which, as if in sport, you
again fanned into a flame, was a sin; but God and the Church have
forgiven it. But tha