"The Augusta shall choose one of us for mate, and him we shall ask to hold the sceptre of Cæsar."
One of them for mate! One of those sensuous self-seekers who would use her as a stepping-stone, and, having obtained supreme power through her dainty hands, would cast her aside as a useless tool and break her heart ere she realised even that she had one.
And from the thoughts of the beautiful girl his mind flew back as if instinctively to that strange phase of his life—those unforgettable days in Judæa which had seemed like unto the turning point of his whole existence. He recalled every moment of that memorable day when he had stood among a multitude on the barren wastes of Galilee and, wrapped in a dark cloak, had listened in solitary silence to words and teachings such as he had never dreamed of before.
"If only I could have understood Thee better then," he murmured; "if more of Thy precious words had fallen on mine ear.... I might have told her then something of what Thou didst say ... I could have found the words to make her understand.... But now I am ignorant and forlorn.... Oh, Man of Galilee! Thou didst die so soon ... and left so many of us groping in the darkness.... Thou Son of God, come back to me, if only in a dream ... show me the way, the truth, the light; show me the star which they say guided the shepherds to Thy cradle ... give me Thy cross, and let me walk once more on Golgotha to Thee."
And even as these words of passionate longing escaped half audibly from his lips his eyes wandered round the seven hills of Rome, and suddenly the highest peak beyond the Forum appeared to him transfigured in the night. Memory with a swift hand drew aside the veil of the present and in a vision showed him a picture of the past. The marble temples of pagan gods disappeared, the hill became bleak and precipitous and dark; great stillness reigned around, save where from afar there came at times the distant roll of thunder. The sky was overcast, great banks of cloud, the colour of lead, with blood-red lights within their massive bosoms, swept storm-tossed across the firmament.
Then from the valley below there came, vaguely remote at first, then rising louder and louder, a sound as when a mighty torrent rushes onwards in its course; and as Taurus Antinor gazed now on that dream-hill, memory showed him, surging like a tempestuous sea, thousands upon thousands of human heads, all tending upwards to the summit of the hill.
They came—the great multitude—they came, and still they came; and like gigantic breakers on a smooth shore, waves of human beings scattered themselves and dispersed upon that hill.
And amongst them all, isolated, walking with bent back and thorn-crowned head well-nigh bowed to the dust, came a Man bearing a Cross.
Taurus Antinor saw Him even now as he had seen Him then, with blood and sweat dripping from His brow, the pale, patient face serene and set, the eyes half closed in agony still glowing with unutterable love and with the perfect peace of complete sacrifice.
And among the sea of faces that gazed on that solitary figure Taurus Antinor had recognised himself.