CHAPTER XXVI
"There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."—Isaiah xlviii. 22.
When after a few hours of light and troubled sleep Dea Flavia woke to partial consciousness, it seemed to her as if Phoebus Apollo had been driving his chariot through a sea of blood; for through the folds of the curtains over the windows she caught a glimpse of the sky, and it was of vivid crimson.
The heat was oppressive, and as the young girl tossed with ever increasing restlessness on the pillows, beads of moisture rose on her forehead and matted the fair curls against her temples.
She felt too tired to get up, even though she vaguely marvelled how wonderful must be the dawn, since its reflection was of such lurid colour. She lay back drowsy and with nerves tingling; she closed her eyes for they ached and burned intolerably.
Gradually to her half-aroused consciousness sounds too began to penetrate. It seemed to her that the usual stately quietude of her house was gravely disturbed this morning, shuffling footsteps could be heard moving across the atrium, voices—scarce subdued—were whispering audibly, and the shouts of the overseers echoed from across the peristyle, and through it all a dull, monotonous sound, distant as yet and faint, came at long intervals, the sound of Jove's thunder over the Campania far away.
Dea Flavia listened more intently, and one by one through the veil which kindly sleep had drawn over her memory, the events of the past day and night knocked at the portals of her brain.
She remembered everything now, and with this sudden onrush of memory of the past, came fuller consciousness of the present.