Hate!' But here," and he threw back
his tunic and placed three fingers over a scar on his breast, "here is
a scar I love. My life it is--my satisfaction--my victory over Rome
which Rome hath no power to take. Aye, the victory of this scar, most
noble mistress, Rome with her armies, her spears, her torch nor her
power of stretching writhing bodies on hewn trees, hath no power to
take! In this I glory! This is my victory and sweet is the scar to
the heart of thy scarred eunuch."

Claudia moved near the slave and looked closer at the scar. "It doth
lie snugly near thy heart," she said. "Thou art a strange scarred
eunuch to call such a one sweet--aye, to call a wound in thy flesh a
victory."

"There is a story, most noble mistress."

"My scarred eunuch hath a story? I have thought so since Pilate made
thee mine."

"Yea, a story. Would that my lips might tell into the ear of the noble
Claudia the story of the scar thy late-bought slave doth bear."

"There is yet time before Pilate cometh. Tell on."

CHAPTER IX

SWEET IS THE SCAR

"Where the blue Aegean washes the shores of sunny Thrace," the eunuch
began, with a far-away look in his eye. "Yea, in the land of
Sparticus, that bravest of all fighters for the freedom of mankind,
there lived my people and there lived I save when to gain knowledge I
attended the schools of Greece. Fields had my people where the vine
hung purple as the sky at midnight and grain did we garner golden as
the belly of the tiger hide beside our hearthstones. Rich was my
father's house in fields, and rich were his sons in wine and stores and
flocks. Golden were my arms with cunningly wrought bracelets and
around my neck hung gems from far lands.

"But richer than purple wine, or golden bands, or jewels, was the look
of her whom I loved. White were the arms she hung around my neck, as
milk and ivory. Pink like the first flush of the morning were the
cheeks my lips pressed. Dark was her hair and soft like smoke in the
evening, and her eyes shone like stars on the bosom of the sea. Blue
as the summer sky were the veins that lay like tender lace over her
virgin bosom. Her breath was fragrant like flowers behind damp stones
and sweet was her voice as the music of waves when rainbow foam kisses
rainbow foam and is lost in one embrace. And she was mine; and I was
hers and a cot at the foot of a violet hill was ours.

"The sun shone. The breezes blew. The flowers bloomed.