"Well!" he said with a leer, "hast seen my face? Art still prepared to disobey?"
"No, my lord," she said slowly, and fixing her eyes fully upon his now, "but I am prepared to die."
"To die? What senseless talk is this?"
"Not senseless, my good lord. Even the gods do allow us poor mortals to find refuge from sorrow in death."
"So!" he said slowly, still gripping her wrists and peering into her face till his scorching breath made her feel sick and faint. "That is the way thou wouldst defy the will of Cæsar? Death, sayest thou?... Death and disobedience—rather than submission to the wish of him who has god-like power on earth. Death!" and he laughed loudly even whilst from afar there came, faint and threatening, the nearer presage of the coming storm. "What death? A pleasing, dreamless sleep brought on by drugs? A soothing draught that lulls even as it kills—or hadst perchance thought of the arena?... of the tiger that roars?... or the lictor's flail that drives?... hadst thought ... hadst thought ..."
He was foaming at the mouth, his rage was choking him; he had only just enough strength left in him to tear at the neck of his tunic, for the next moment he would have fallen, felled like an ox by the power of his own fury. But as soon as he had released Dea Flavia's wrists and she felt herself free to move, she rose from her knees, and with quick, almost mechanical gesture, she rearranged her disordered robe and shook back the heavy masses of her hair. Then she stood quite still, with arms hanging by her side, her head quite erect and her eyes fixed upon that raving monster. When she saw that he had at last regained some semblance of reason she said quite calmly:
"My gracious lord will work his way with his slave, and deal her what death he desires."
"What!" he murmured incoherently, "what didst thou say?"
"'Tis death I choose, my lord," she said simply, "rather than a husband who was not of mine own seeking."
For a moment then she did look death straight and calmly in the face, for it was death that looked on her through those blood-shot eyes. He had thrust his lower jaw forward, his teeth, large and yellow, looked like the fangs of a wolf; stertorous breathing escaped his nostrils, and his distorted fingers were working convulsively, like the claws of a beast when it sees its prey.