Under the blazing lights the two stood together, and the body of the dead girl lay at their feet. The Queen pointed to it. Her arm and hand were of faultless beauty. She was thirty-eight, but with all the bloom and fullness of just-ripened womanhood. Years had not set one streak of alloy in the treasure of her golden hair, or clouded the azure of her eyes, or done more than perfect in her the natural weapons of the sorceress. She might have been the Decurion’s sister, so like he was to her in grace and Grecian fairness.
She fixed him with her eyes.
“I marked thee, Decurion,” she said—“and not for the first time. Thy looks defied me, thine eyes condemned. What—did you dare! And thy lip curled when Antony yielded me the cup. Answer why, so thou wouldst not——”
He stayed her fearlessly:
“Because I love him.”
“What, then?” she said, wondering.
“Could he not see, as we all saw,” he answered, “that thou hadst poisoned it? For his wit’s sake I would have had him comprehend; for his nobility’s sake I would have had him refuse thee the cup; for his soul’s sake I would have had him drink from it himself, and die, and be free.”
“Free? From what?”
“From his thrall.”
“What callest thou that?”