“Are you ready?” he asked her. She looked him full in the face and slowly raised her left arm, stiffly straight, hand extended, palm down, until her finger-tips were almost level with his face and not a foot from it. Holding it so at full stretch she asked: “What do you think of that? Am I ready?” Commodus regarded her finger-tips, her face, and again her finger-tips: “Hercules be good to me!” he exclaimed. “Not a tremble, not a waver, not a quiver. You are mighty cool. You’ve plenty of confidence. I take it you are ready.” “I am,” said Brinnaria. “Where is that sieve?” From behind her spoke Calvaster. “I have a sieve here.” Commodus rounded on him like an angry mastiff. “Who authorized you to speak?” he demanded. “You act as if you were Emperor. You are merely a minor Pontiff. Remember that and speak when you are spoken to.” Calvaster, abashed but persistent, stammered: “I merely offered a sieve.” “None of your concern to offer a sieve,” Commodus growled. “You insult all of us and me most of all. Do you take me to be so unfair as to subject this lady to her test with a sieve brought and offered by her accuser?” Calvaster was dumb. “Show me that sieve,” the Emperor commanded. Calvaster produced from under his robes a copper-hooped sieve strung with linen. Commodus handed it to Brinnaria. “What do you think of that sieve?” he inquired. Brinnaria held it up to the light and looked through the web; held it level, upside down, and looked along the web. “It is very irregularly woven,” she pronounced; “some of the meshes are three times the size of others. It is very unevenly strung, it bags in two places.” She held it up to her face a moment. “Also,” she concluded, “it has been scrubbed with wood-ashes and fuller’s-earth. Vesta herself could not carry water in that sieve.” “Give it back to me!” the Emperor ordered. He eyed it as she had, sniffed at it like a dog at a mouse-hole, and glared over it at Calvaster. “You advertise yourself to all the world,” he snarled, “as an unworthy Pontiff and a contemptible caitiff. You attempt to entrap me into the meanest unfairness! You pose as a public-spirited citizen solicitous about the sanctity of the worship of Vesta and I find you a pettifogging wretch actuated by spite and malice. You desire not a fair test, but the ruin of a woman you are low-minded enough to hate. Eugh!” With one of his excesses of unconventional energy he flung the sieve far out over the river. It sailed whirling through the air, splashed in the water and sank out of sight. “For the price of one dried bean, I’d order you thrown after it,” said Commodus to Calvaster. He beckoned one of his aides. “Signal that boat!” he commanded.