"The slave is mine," she retorted curtly. "She shall come with me."
And even as she spoke she drew herself up to her full height, more like, he thought, than ever to a stately lily now. The crown of gold upon her head caught a glint from the noonday sun, and the folds of her white tunic fell straight and rigid from her shoulders down to her feet.
It seemed strange to him that one so young, so exquisitely pure, should thus be left all alone to face the hard moments of life; her very disdain for him, her wilfulness, seemed to him pathetic, for they showed her simple ignorance of the many cruelties which life must of necessity have in store for her.
As for yielding to her present mood, he had no thought of it. It was caprice originally which had caused her to defy his will and to break old Menecreta's heart. She had invoked strict adherence to the law for the sole purpose of indulging this caprice. Now he was tempted also to stand upon the law and to defy her tyrannical will, even at the cost of his own inclinations in the matter.
He would not trust her with the child Nola now. He had other plans for the orphan girl, rendered lonely and desolate through a great lady's whim, and he would have felt degradation in the thought that Dea Flavia should impose her will on him in this.
He knew her power of course. She was a near kinswoman of the Emperor, and the child of his adoption; she was all-powerful with the Cæsar as with all men through the might of his personality as much as through that of her wealth.
But he had no thought of yielding nor any thought of fear. It seemed as if in the heat-laden atmosphere two mighty wills had suddenly clashed one against the other, brandishing ghostly steels. His will against hers! The might of manhood and of strength against the word of a beautiful woman. Nor was the contest unequal. If he could crush her with a touch of his hand, she could destroy him with one word in the Cæsar's ear. She had as her ally the full unbridled might of the House of Cæsar, while against her there was only this stranger, a descendant of a freedwoman from a strange land. For the nonce his influence was great over the mind of the quasi-madman who sat on the Empire's throne, but any moment, any event, the whisper of an enemy, the word of a woman, might put an end to his power.
All this Dea Flavia knew, and knowing it found pleasure in toying with his wrath. Armed with the triple weapon of her beauty, her purity and her power, she taunted him with his impotence and smiled with scornful pity upon the weakness of his manhood.
Even now she turned to Nola and said with gentle firmness:
"Get up, girl, and come with me."