He had rushed to the Cæsar trying to protect him, when thousands on thousands of throats were acclaiming his name as future lord of Rome. Why?
He had rushed into the arena and risked his life to save a man who two days ago had insulted him, who—at best—was nothing to him. Why?
These questions she had meant to ask him when he was sleeping: now she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this strange answer to her questions.
Her eyes had become quite accustomed to the darkness beyond the light. She could see clearly the powerful figure on bended knees, the wide shoulders with the bandages disposed over them by the physician for the healing of those horrible wounds, and the fingers linked together in a manner which she had never seen before. And now the hands stirred ever so slightly, the light caught the fingers more directly, and Dea Flavia saw that—clasped between them—there was a small wooden cross.
And she knew now—all in a moment—that the answer to her questions lay there before her, not in the man's face, for that she could not see, but in his clasped hands and in the cross which they held. She knew that it was because of it—or rather because of that which had gone before, and of which that little cross was the tangible memory—that he had been ready to give his life for an enemy, and to give up all ambition and all pride for the sake of his allegiance to Cæsar!
A sigh must have escaped her lips, or merely just the indrawing of her breath; certain it is that something caused the kneeling man to stir. He raised his head very slowly, and then looked up straight across the light—to her.
For one second he remained quite still, on his knees and with that white vision before him, ghost-like and silent, against the crimson background of the curtain. Then softly, as a sigh, one word escaped his lips:
"Dea!"
He rose to his feet but already she had fled, noiselessly as she had come, but swiftly across the studio and the atrium and back to her room, but even while she fled it seemed to her that on the silent night air there still trembled the sound of a voice, vibrating with longing and with passion, mournful as a sigh, appealing as the call of a bird to its mate:
"Dea!"