“You have me!” he acknowledged. “Your contentions are sound. But, all the same, even if it was merely a violation of rule, still, it is a mighty serious matter. It is a good thing for you that I like you, that my Father trusted you so notably, and gave me such explicit and emphatic injunctions about you, that you have made a clean breast of it all to me. If I had known nothing more about you than I know of Manlia or Gargilia, if I had learned of your escapade from anyone but you, I’d have had you formally accused, tried, convicted and buried alive with the utmost dispatch. “As things are, after all Father had to say about you, after his detailing to me your several conversations with him, I understand, I sympathize, I am convinced of the innocence of your feeling for Almo, of the austerity with which you have banished from you all thoughts unbefitting a Vestal and have postponed your anticipations of marriage until your service shall have come to an end, I believe in the impeccable correctness of your attitude. “But, without that, even having learnt of your prank from yourself, I should have thought it necessary to lay the facts before the College of Pontiffs and ask their opinion. It looks fishy, stravaging all over the landscape after dark with a cavalier beside your litter all night long. I comprehend, I condone, I judge that you have not impaired your qualifications for your high office. I have no qualms. But it is well for you that Father instructed me. Go on, tell me the rest.” Over the fight he rubbed his hands and chirruped with delight, and, when she spoke of the King’s harem, he burst into roars of laughter, rolling himself on his throne, slapping his thighs, holding his ribs. “Oh you women,” he gurgled, “you are all alike, you Vestals as much as the rest! The fire of womanhood smoulders under your icy composure like the fires of Etna under her mantle of snow. “You more than most Vestals, of course. You are a real human being, you are! So you went out to save him, even if you lost your life trying, even if you were buried alive for it, and you came back hot, red hot, to have him killed, and the sooner the better, it couldn’t be too soon for you. “Oh, I’m glad you came. I haven’t been entertained like this since I was made Emperor. Go on!” When she uttered the word Fagutal and told of her visit to the rookery he had another fit of laughter and exhausted himself with mirth. When she narrated the repeated failures of the champions she had suborned and Almo’s uniform success, Commodus was in ecstasy. “He’s the boy for my money,” he cried. “He’s worth all the trouble you’ve had with him. You’ll get a husband worth waiting for. He’s one in a million. One hundred and five bouts in ten months and victor in all of them! He’s a jewel, a pearl I I’d do anything for you, as I told you, I’d keep myself on the rack day and night for you and him. You are a pair! There’s not on earth the match for the two of you!”