At length she reached her home, passed up the broad flight of steps in front, and stood panting within the doorway. A momentary pause ere she entered, and then, unable to continue the control which she had so far maintained over herself, she turned and cast one hasty, curious glance below. The two new slaves of the centurion stood side by side in the street, gazing up at the palace walls, the dwarf with a grin of almost idiotic glee, the other with a grave air of quiet contemplation. But what was that sudden look of startled recognition that suddenly flashed across the features of the latter? Why did his face turn so ghastly pale in the moonlight, and his limbs seem to fail him, so that he grasped his companion's arm for support? AEnone shrank terrified into the obscurity of the doorway. But in an instant she recovered her self-possession. It must be that he had been faint or giddy, nothing more. It could not have been recognition that had startled him from his earnest contemplation, for he had not been looking toward her, but, with his body half turned away, had been gazing up at the highest story of the palace. CHAPTER VI. And now, having avoided the immediate peril of recognition, AEnone turned into the palace. Even there, however, her disordered fancy pictured dangers still encompassing her. How, after all, could she feel sure that she had not been known? During that clear moonlight passage along the Appian Way, what revelations might not have been made by a chance look or gesture! At the very first she had almost stumbled upon the truth merely through the magic of one upward glance of the eye of the wearied slave; why, then, might she not have unconsciously revealed herself to him by even a wave of the hand or a turn of the instep, or by some other apparently trivial and unimportant motion? And if so, at what instant might he not forget his fallen condition, and disregard not only his safety but her reputation, by pressing into the palace and claiming the right of speech with her? Rasher deeds were not seldom done under the promptings of desperation. Trembling beneath the sway of such imaginings, each footfall that resounded in the hall seemed like the light and buoyant step of him who had trodden with her the sands of Ostia--each figure that passed by bore, for the instant, the outline of his form--even at the open window the well-known face seemed to peer in at every corner and watch her.