told them that he would come again
to see me."

"He wished to turn suspicion from himself. If he knew not what happened,
he would have come to seek Lygia in my house."

"He left a few words on a tablet, from which thou wilt see that, knowing
Lygia to have been taken from his house by Caesar, at thy request and
that of Petronius, he expected that she would be sent to thee, and
this morning early he was at thy house, where they told him what had
happened."

When she had said this, she went to the cubiculum and returned soon with
the tablet which Aulus had left.

Vinicius read the tablet, and was silent; Acte seemed to read the
thoughts on his gloomy face, for she said after a while,--"No, Marcus.
That has happened which Lygia herself wished."

"It was known to thee that she wished to flee!" burst out Vinicius.

"I knew that she would not become thy concubine." And she looked at him
with her misty eyes almost sternly.

"And thou,--what hast thou been all thy life?"

"I was a slave, first of all."

But Vinicius did not cease to be enraged. Caesar had given him Lygia;
hence he had no need to inquire what she had been before. He would find
her, even under the earth, and he would do what he liked with her. He
would indeed! She should be his concubine. He would give command to flog
her as often as he pleased. If she grew distasteful to him, he would
give her to the lowest of his slaves, or he would command her to turn a
handmill on his lands in Africa. He would seek her out now, and find her
only to bend her, to trample on her, and conquer her.

And, growing more and more excited, he lost every sense of measure, to
the degree that even Acte saw that he was promising more than he could
execute; that he was talking because of pain and anger. She might have
had even compassion on him, but his extravagance exhausted her patience,
and at last she inquired why he had come to her.

Vinicius did not find an answer immediately. He had come to her
because he wished to come, because he judged that she would give him
information; but really he had come to Caesar, and, not being able to see
him, he came to her. Lygia, by fleeing, opposed the will of Caesar; hence
he would implore him to give an order to search for her throughout the
city and the empire, even if it came to using for that purpose all the
legions, and to ransacking in turn every house within Roman dominion.
Petronius would support his prayer, and the search would