"Bah!" he said with a snarl, "I mistrust that maidenly reserve which men call pride, and I, clever coquetry. The women of Rome have realised, fortunately by now, that they are the slaves of their masters, to be bought and sold as he directs. The wife must learn that she is the slave of her husband, the daughter that she belongs to the father; the women of the House of Cæsar that they belong to me."
"It is a hard lesson my lord would teach to one half of his subjects."
"It is," he said with brutal cynicism, "but I like teaching it. I hope to live long enough—nay! I mean to live long enough—to establish a marriage market in Rome, where the lords of the earth can buy what women they want openly, for so many sesterces, as they can their cattle and their pigs."
She recoiled from the man a little at these words and a blush of shame slowly rose to her cheek. But she retorted calmly:
"The gods do speak through Cæsar's mouth and he frames the laws even as they wish."
Her words flattered his egregious vanity which had even as great, if not a greater, hold upon him than his tyrannical temper. He knew that to this proud girl he was as a god, and that her respect for his Cæsarship made her blind to every one of his faults, but this additional simple testimony from her pure lips caused him to relent towards her, and quite instinctively made him curb the violent grossness of his tongue.
"Thou speakest truly, O Dea Flavia," he said complacently. "The gods will, when the time comes, speak through my mouth and make known their will through my dictates even as they have done hitherto—even as they do at this moment when I tell thee that I desire to see thee married."
"My lord hath spoken," she said calmly.
"Do not think, O Dea Flavia," he continued, carried away by his own eloquence, "that I desire aught but thy happiness. If I decide to give thee for wife to a man, it shall only be to one who is worthy of thee in every respect. Thou shalt help me to choose him ... for I have not yet made my choice ... he shall testify before thee as to his nobility and his bravery.... An thou dost assure me that thou hast not yet bestowed thy regard on any man——"
He paused midway in his phrase with indrawn breath, waiting for her reply. She gave it firmly and without hesitation.