e expressions that fell from his lips were broken. For the
first time, too, he was so near her. His thoughts grew disturbed; he
felt a flame in his veins which he tried in vain to quench with wine.
Not wine, but her marvellous face, her bare arms, her maiden breast
heaving under the golden tunic, and her form hidden in the white folds
of the peplus, intoxicated him more and more. Finally, he seized her arm
above the wrist, as he had done once at Aulus's, and drawing her toward
him whispered, with trembling lips,--"I love thee, Callina,--divine
one."

"Let me go, Marcus," said Lygia.

But he continued, his eyes mist-covered, "Love me, my goddess!"

But at that moment was heard the voice of Acte, who was reclining on the
other side of Lygia.

"Caesar is looking at you both."

Vinicius was carried away by sudden anger at Caesar and at Acte. Her
words had broken the charm of his intoxication. To the young man even
a friendly voice would have seemed repulsive at such a moment, but he
judged that Acte wished purposely to interrupt his conversation with
Lygia. So, raising his head and looking over the shoulder of Lygia at
the young freedwoman, he said with malice:

"The hour has passed, Acte, when thou didst recline near Caesar's side
at banquets, and they say that blindness is threatening thee; how then
canst thou see him?"

But she answered as if in sadness: "Still I see him. He, too, has short
sight, and is looking at thee through an emerald."

Everything that Nero did roused attention, even in those nearest
him; hence Vinicius was alarmed. He regained self-control, and began
imperceptibly to look toward Caesar. Lygia, who, embarrassed at the
beginning of the banquet, had seen Nero as in a mist, and afterward,
occupied by the presence and conversation of Vinicius, had not looked at
him at all, turned to him eyes at once curious and terrified.

Acte spoke truly. Caesar had bent over the table, half-closed one eye,
and holding before the other a round polished emerald, which he used,
was looking at them. For a moment his glance met Lygia's eyes, and the
heart of the maiden was straitened with terror. When still a child on
Aulus's Sicilian estate, an old Egyptian slave had told her of dragons
which occupied dens in the mountains, and it seemed to her now that all
at once the greenish eye of such a monster was gazing at her. She caught
at Vinicius's hand as a frightened child would, and disconnected, quick
impression