"It was not my fate, O sister! The gods had not so decreed. Unknown, mysterious hands tangle the threads of human destiny, and guide them harshly through life. So who ought to be called to account for the soul? The man whose wife I became was a pitiful libertine, who appeared just at the time Manlius decided in your favour, and by producing a document which contained proof that our father was connected with a conspiracy against Carinus, forced me to become his wife." "And therefore my father cursed you." "May he never recall his curse. It has been fulfilled. This venal slave lost his head when the Caesar saw me. From that moment my life was a perpetual warfare, whose weapons were flattery and seduction. I had to defend my father constantly. All the men who breathe here are his foes! The Caesar hates him because he will not flatter him; the courtiers hate him because he is a man of honour; the people hate him because he is rich; every criminal hates him because here virtue is considered a conspiracy against sin. I was forced to conquer all Rome, from the Caesar to the plebeian, that I might save the grey hairs on my father's head. I attended the Imperator's orgies. I allowed myself to be applauded in the amphitheatre by the dregs of the people, and to be flattered by base courtiers. And how often I have torn up Mesembrius's death sentence after I succeeded, half by cajolery, half by force, in wresting it from the hands of spies, demagogues, senators, lictors, and even those of the Caesar himself!" "And this brought you my father's curses." "He was right. It was contemptible in the daughter of a Roman patrician. Oh, he must never know it. If he should learn that he lived at such a cost, he would kill himself." "You also discovered that the hiding place of my fellow-believers was betrayed, and hastened there in advance of the others?" "I informed Manlius of it two days before, but he shrank from entering my house. Now there is no other way of escape save the one I offer, and thus fate will be best satisfied. She who merits death and desires it will die, and those who enjoy life and deserve it will be happy. That is right. Return to your father and to Manlius, Sophronia, and then go far, far away from here." CHAPTER VI. Sophronia, sobbing, threw her arms around her sister's neck. In rapid alternations of feeling the shining vision of a happy life passed before her mind. She saw her loving old father who guarded her so anxiously from every breath of air; she saw the youth whose pure love promised her long years of joy in the future. The girl's strength of mind vanished before this alluring picture, and she sank on the bosom of her sister, who, with a brave though sad face, clasped her in her arms as a mythological goddess of war would embrace an angel that belonged to the realms of another deity.