‘Fool—fool!’ she reiterated hoarsely. Her jewelled hand caught at the drapery about her throat, and rent it away from the gleaming beauty of her neck and wildly heaving breast, as if to relieve a horror of suffocation.
‘Not so—not so, Plautia!’ cried the startled Centurion, ‘you wrong yourself and me—you have demeaned yourself in no way—you have honoured me with an affection it is out of my power to return. Your secret shall be ever sacred with me. As to my heart, Plautia, it pains me too sharply for the unhappiness it would have avoided, but cannot. All the love it can hold is given to another.’
‘To another—another woman! Who is she?—Where is she?—What is her name?’ was demanded, with something of the manner of a tigress.
‘You have never known her, seen her, or heard of her, and to speak of her will do no good.’
‘I will know!’
‘You may know some time hence, but it is to no purpose now.’
She gazed at him for a moment with a furious glance, her head thrown back, and her figure drawn up to its utmost height. Then, strange to tell, in the next brief second every strained fibre of her body seemed to relax, and, with a kind of hysterical gasp or sob, she fell on his breast and gave way to an uncontrollable burst of weeping. Her brief madness, burnt out by its own fierceness, and departing as rapidly as it had come, had left her at the mercy of the reaction, drained of strength and weak in spirit. Nor was the expression of her changed mood of helpless wretchedness in any degree less accordant with the vehemence of her nature. Her frame was shaken with convulsive violence, and the Pretorian was enabled to contemplate another phase of the volcanic passions which had hitherto lain hid, to him at least, beneath the crust of her calm unruffled haughtiness. The frenzied storm gust had startled him, but the sudden drop into the depth of hysterical woe and feminine weakness quite unmanned him. He had witnessed the anger of men and the weeping of women ere now, but here was a revelation. His heart turned chill at suggesting the hate of the lava-blooded creature on his breast.
It was useless to attempt to stop or soothe the tempest of her feelings; like her wrath it was too fierce to last very long. It began to abate in a few minutes, to the intense relief of his agitated mind.
‘Come, Plautia, courage! This is too terrible—courage!’
His voice restored her, and she lifted herself at once from his bosom with the same proud mien the world knew, as if the teeming moments had thoroughly purged her veins clear and cool of the riotous fires of passion.