d soon be demanded
of her.

'And here I am at last, Leta--as yourself, a slave!' he concluded.

'Courage, my friend!' was her answer. 'There are very many degrees and
fates reserved for all in this old Rome, and much for every man to
learn. And many a one who has begun as a slave has, in the end, attained
not only to freedom, but to high honor and station.'

'If the gods were to give me honor and station, far be it from me to
refuse the gift,' he said. 'But that, of itself alone, would not content
me, unless you were there to share the good with me. And with yourself I
would crave no other blessing. We are slaves here, Leta, but even that
fate may have its mitigations and happiness for us.'

She was silent. How could she tell it to him? But his suspicions, at
first vague, were now aroused by her very silence into more certainty.

'Tell me,' he cried, again taking her hand, 'tell me my fate; and if
sorrow is to come upon me, let it come now. It seems as though there
were indeed evil tidings in store for me. The blight of anticipated evil
even weighed upon me ere I passed yonder hall, and when I knew no reason
why I should not find you loving of heart and humble of desire as in
other days. Is it all gone? Are you no longer the same? This tawdry
velvet in which I found you arrayed--is it the type of a something
equally foreign to your nature, and which imperial Rome has thrown
about you to aid in crushing out the better feelings of your heart?'

'My friend, my brother,' she said at length, with some real pity and
some false sorrow, 'why have we again met? Why is it now forced upon me
to tell you that the past must always be the past with us?'

He dropped her hand, and the tears started into his eyes. Much as the
words and gestures of the last few minutes had prepared him for the
announcement, yet when it came, it smote him as though there had been no
premonition of it; so lovingly had his heart persisted in clinging to
the faint hope that he might have been mistaken. A low wail of anguish
burst from his lips.

'And this is the end of all?' he sobbed.

'Think only,' she said, 'think only that I am not worthy of you.'

'The old story--the old story which has been repeated from the beginning
of the world,' he cried, stung into life by something of heartlessness
which he detected in her affected sympathy. 'The woman weaves her toils
about the man--gilds his life until there is no brightness which can
compare with it