r heart stood still, and she had to cling to the curtain--he
pointed to the statue, with a nod of intelligence to Constantine. The
young officer bowed with military formality and gave a word of command
to his men, which was drowned by the wild cries of the heathen as soon
as they apprehended with dismay what its import was.

The veterans were stirred. A subaltern officer, putting the standard he
bore into the hands of the man next to him and taking his axe from him
instead, rushed towards the statue, gazed up at it--and then, letting
the axe sink, withdrew slowly to rejoin the others who still stood
hesitating, looking at each other with doubting and defiant eyes.

Once more Constantine shouted his order, louder and more positively than
before; but the men did not move. The subaltern flung his axe on the
ground and the rest followed his example, pointing eagerly to the god,
and vehemently adjuring their prefect--refusing apparently to obey his
commands--for he went to the recalcitrant standard-bearer, a grey-haired
veteran, and laying his hand on the man's shoulder shook him angrily,
evidently threatening him and his comrades.

In these brave souls a struggle was going on, between their sense of
discipline and devotion to their fine young leader, and their awe of
the god; it was visible in their puzzled faces, in their hands raised
in supplication. Constantine, however, relentlessly repeated his order;
and, when they still refused to obey, he turned his back on their ranks
with a gesture of bitter contempt, and shouted his commands to the
infantry posted by the colonnade behind which Gorgo was watching all
these proceedings.

But these also were refractory. The heathen were triumphant, and
encouraged the soldiers with loud cries to persist.

Constantine turned once more to his own men, and finding them obstinate
in their disobedience, he went forward himself to where the ladders were
standing, moved one of them from the wall and leaned it up against the
body of the statue, seized the axe that lay nearest, and mounted from
rung to rung. The murmurs of the heathen were suddenly silenced; the
multitude were so still that the least sound of one plate of armor
against another was audible, that each man could hear his neighbor
breathe, and that Gorgo fancied she could hear her own heart throb.

The man and the god stood face to face, and the man who was about to
lay hands on the god was her lover. She watched his movemen