"I speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee. Have I not said I indorse two?" "Two!" "Two. Of Caesar first. His part in the bargain is really the smaller thing. Thou, who couldst dint Flaccus' heart in Flaccus' stonier days, who upset Caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in Macro's forelock--all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting ancient in Capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its wall." "Oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself? If thine impurpled countenance--for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh--if thine impurpled countenance does not suit my Epicurean tastes, how shall I content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling Boeotian?" "Thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the toothless one." "It is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected. "Thou hast done it before," he declared. "Thou art right expert." She laughed and leaned back in her chair. "Name me the comely one," she commanded. "Agrippa." There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes very slowly and faced him. Amusement made small lines about her eyes, and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness. "And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound. Is it the Lady Herod?" His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened his face. Presently he scowled. "I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore." "Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth. "Sore! I tell thee, that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!" Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible. Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out and resolved into cold ashes in half that time. That it should endure years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles, all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple. Yet to reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at her side was a task she could not attempt. "Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured. "Perchance the Jewess dropped madness from a philter in thy wine. And for simple cruelty, too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab." The proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former experiences. But he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing. She watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly: "Is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?" "Both!" he answered. "The one accomplished, the other follows!" With a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers about her smooth wrist and bent over her.