and fluctuant with the figured robes
of courtesans.

VI.

ALLIES.

Night had come again, before Marcia could arouse herself from the deep
sleep with which exhaustion of mind and body had overwhelmed her. She
remembered the scenes of the banquet as the phantasms of a
dream--strange and terrible; for her thoughts were slow to gather the
threads and weave the woof. Only a feeling of failure, of fruitless
abasement, was ever present. Hannibal had admired her, but, proof
against any controlling attraction, he had put her words aside with
little short of contempt. A dread, even, lest the strange acumen of
this wonderful man had pierced her mask, and that her very motive and
mission were already suspected, was not lacking to add dismay to
discouragement. Such thoughts were but wretched company, and they
brought with them a vague conception of her own vain egotism in
imagining the possibility of other outcome. She tried to sleep again,
but could not. What mattered it though, by some shifting of hours, her
day had become night and her night day! She must arise and talk with
some one, if it were only the host whom she so heartily despised.

Attendants entered at her summons, and the refreshment of the bath and
the labour of the toilet were once more passed through. Then,
dismissing the slaves, she walked out alone into the garden and sat
down on a softly cushioned seat of carved marble. A fountain plashed
soothingly in the foliage near by, the stars were shining again, while,
from without, the jarring sounds of the city came to her ears.

How long she sat, awake yet thinking of nothing, dull and dazed, she
could not tell. Then she was aroused by a sandalled step upon the
pavement. A man was standing before her, whose face, despite its
youthful contours, was deep-lined and melancholy. He was short of
stature and slenderly though gracefully built, and his black curls
clustered over brow and eyes that seemed rather those of a poet or a
dreamer than of a man of action. In the sombre, dark blue garments of
mourning, without ornaments or jewels, so different from the gay
banqueting robes in which she had last seen him, Marcia gazed a moment,
before she recognized Perolla, the son of Pacuvius.

"You are not pretty to-night, Scylla," he said tauntingly, "though you
left us early. There are dark circles under the eyes that looked
kindly at the enemy of your country."

Marcia flushed crimson, and he went on: "