like a pillar of fire in the sunlight; he could see the
beginning of those many roads radiating from it to far peripheries of
the empire. Tens of thousands had turned their backs upon it, leaving
with slow feet, some to live in distant, inhospitable lands, some to
die of fever and the sword, some to return forgotten of their kindred,
and some few with laurels of renown; but all of these many who went
away were leaving, for long or forever, love and home and peace.

"The army is sucking our blood, and Hate grows while Love is starving,"
Vergilius reflected, as he went along, while a hideous, unwelcome
thought grew slowly, creeping over him. This golden mile-stone was the
centre of a great spider-web laced by road and sea way to the far
corners of the empire; and that cunning, alert man--who was he but the
spider?

"And I--what am I, now, but one of his flies caught in the mighty web?"
he thought. "Love and its peace have come to me and I shall know
them--for three days--and perhaps no longer."

His wealth and rank and influence might, if used with diplomacy, have
kept him at home, for, after all, he was a Varro; but Arria had been
used to press him into bondage.

"Another test!" he said to himself. "Ah, what a cunning old fox! He
needed a spy, and one of character and noble blood. How well he tested
my cleverness! And now I am his, body and soul."

CHAPTER 7

While Vergilius, going slowly, was thinking of these things, Vanity,
the only real goddess who, in Rome, managed the great theatre of
fashion, had her stage set for a love scene. It was to occur in the
triclinium, or great banquet-hall, of a palace--that of the Lady Lucia.
There were portrait-masks and mural paintings on either wall; ancestral
statues of white marble stood in a row against the red wall; there were
seats and divans of ebony enriched by cunning hands; lamp-holders of
wrought metal standing high as a man's head, and immense violet rugs on
the floor. The heroine wore a white robe banded low with purple, and
her jewelled hair was in fillets of gold. There was always a pretty
artfulness in the match-making of a patrician beauty and her mother.
Indeed, life had grown far from elemental emotions.

"Now, when he enters," said the girl, turning to the Lady Lucia, "I
shall bring him here at once and sit down by this heap of cushions, and
then--Oh, god of my heart! What shall I do with that big man--what
shall I say to him?"

"My de