The girl’s head was hanging on her breast in painful thought. ‘Could I be ashamed of my own parents?’ she said.
The potter’s face clouded deep and he went away to the window, where he turned his back on the lovers, and looked into the garden in silent reflection.
Martialis stepped to Neæra’s side, and so they remained without a word for some time. A struggle was proceeding in Masthlion’s breast, and his lips were moving as he communed with himself. ‘Shall she be told?’ he thought; ‘would she lose me, or still cling to me? We have reared and tended her—new ways beget new ideas—it is idle to say we will be thus and thus until the time try us. To go, and find ourselves despised hereafter, perchance, would be a crueller thing than to remain here forgotten and forsaken. Must she be told? She knows nothing, or is ever like to know—how then can it matter to her if she be left in ignorance? But am I not selfish? Would it be just? I am afraid—it is fear; for the knowledge would sign her relief at once. Even if she still clung to me, how would he, a noble-born knight, take it? Yet, if she could disown me, after all our life of love and companionship, what is there honest or good in the world?’
A half-smothered groan broke from his lips in the tension of his feelings. He drowned it with a forced cough, and turned round. He looked upon the lovers standing in their fond attitude. They were a handsome pair, and the one not a whit unworthy of the other in any degree.
‘Well, Masthlion, have you decided?’ said Martialis. ‘Have you dismissed your suspicion from your mind? You have hurt me by it, believe me!’
‘Father!’ began Neæra, leaving her lover’s arms and going to him. The potter held up his hand before her and said, in a broken voice, scarcely more than a hoarse whisper—
‘No—not father!’
‘What!’ cried the astonished girl.
A strange feeling rose through the mind of the Pretorian. He checked it, and despised himself for it, but he could not help it; he would have been other than human to have done so. He looked inquiringly for more to follow from the lips of the potter, but the latter merely murmured—
‘Go, and leave me for a space!’ and then dropped his head, and covered his face with his hands.