With that he extended his foot, and touched the senseless body of Cleotos--striking it carelessly, and not too gently. The effect of the speech and action was to arouse still more actively the energetic impulses of AEnone--but not, alas! to that bold display of conscious innocence with which, a moment before, she had threatened to sweep aside his insinuations, and make good her justification. She was now rather driven into a passion of reckless daring--believing that her fate was prejudged and forestalled--caring but little what might happen to her--wishing only to give way to her most open impulses, let the consequences be what they might. Therefore, in yielding to that spirit of defiance, she did the thing which of all others harmed her most, since its immediate and natural result was to give greater cogency to the suspicions against her. Stooping down and resting herself upon the lounge, she raised the head of the still senseless Cleotos upon her lap, and began tenderly to wipe his lips, from a wound in which a slight stream of blood had begun to ooze. 'He and I are innocent,' she said. 'I have treated him as a brother, that is all. It is years ago that I met him first, and then he was still more to me than now. He is now poor and in misery, and I cannot abandon him. Had he been in your place, and you in his, he would not have thus, without proof, condemned you, and then have insulted your lifeless body.' For a moment Sergius stood aghast. Excuse and pleading he was prepared to hear. Recriminations would not have surprised him, for he knew that his own course would not bear investigation, and nothing, therefore, could be more natural than that she should attempt to defend herself by becoming the assailant in turn. But that she should thus defy him--before his eyes should bestow endearments upon a slave, the partner of her apparent guilt, and with whom she acknowledged having had an intimacy years before, was too astounding for him at first to understand. Then recovering himself, he cried aloud: 'Is this to be borne? Ho, there, Drumo! Meros! all of you! Take this wretch and cast him into the prison! See that he does not escape, on your lives! He shall feed the lions to-morrow! By the gods, he shall feed the lions! Bear him away! Let me not see him again till I see his blood lapped up in the arena. Away with him, I say!'