I recognized her mood and knew that I had not only distracted her from her bloodthirst but had her entire attention. I knew what I must do, but I raged at the ridiculous exhibition which I must make of myself before the most fastidious and conventional of Rome's noblewomen. Yet, if I was to save them, I must not hesitate. I threw myself flat on my side on the pavement and made clawing motions with my hands and feet, the leopard responded to my suggestion, capered again as before and, when close to me, lay down before me on the pavement and began to paw at me, purring loudly in her throat, now and then snarling softly. She played with me as she had often played before, all her claws sheathed and her paws soft as thistledown; mumbling my hands and forearms in her hot mouth, slavering over them, yet never so much as bruising the skin with her needle-sharp teeth. Yet I seemed to detect a subtle difference in her mood and, from moment to moment, dreaded that she might claw me to ribbons or sink her fangs in my shoulders or face.

All the while she was mouthing, pawing and kicking me I was raging at Agathemer for having put me in a position where I had to make so undignified an exhibition of myself before such an assemblage.

Presently I recognized that alteration in her mood which made it possible for me to rise, take her by the scruff of the neck, and lead her off to her cage.

When I had her inside I realized how hot, sweaty, dusty tousled, rumpled and mussed I was. Her cage was under the vaulted arcade beneath the second terrace. I was, when I shot its bolts, altogether out of sight of Vedia, Nemestronia and the other noble ladies who had been spectators of my tussle with the leopard. I did not want them to see me again in my dishevelled and dirty condition: I sneaked into the house by the passage from the arcade into the cellars and up the scullery stairs, made the first slave I saw escort me to the guest-room I usually occupied when at Nemestronia's and bade him summon bath-attendants and dressers. Nemestronia had a store-room lined with wardrobes of men's attire containing every sort of garment of every style and size. I was soon clean and clad as a gentleman should be in a fresh tunic and in the garment I had left in the water-garden, which a footman had fetched for me.

Then I went out on the upper terrace.

There I found the nine ladies, with some maids and waiters. Before the ladies, facing Nemestronia, stood Agathemer; behind and about him Nemestronia's six big, husky, bull-necked slave-lashers, the two head- lashers with their many-lashed scourges.

I realized at once what had happened. Nemestronia had needed no one to inform her that it was through Agathemer's negligence or mismanagement that the leopard had escaped from the wild-garden. She had not waited to ask me to investigate the matter and punish my slave. She had, like the great noblewoman she was, assumed my acquiescence and approval and summoned and questioned Agathemer. Before I appeared his answers had convicted him. She did not look round at me as I joined the group and seated myself in a vacant chair on her left, between Vedia and Claudia Ardeana. As I seated myself she gave the order:

"Strip him and give him a hundred lashes!"

Now, then and there I found myself in the most cruel and painful situation I had ever been in my life. Agathemer and I had been playmates almost from our cradles; comrades, cronies, chums all our lives. Neither of us had ever had a brother. Each had been, since infancy, a brother to the other. I could not have loved a real brother any more than I loved Agathemer, nor could he have had more implicit confidence in the goodwill of a blood brother. I was, in fact, as solicitous for Agathemer's welfare as for my own, and I rejoiced with his joys and mourned with his griefs. I would have done anything to protect him and save him, as he had faithfully and tirelessly nursed and cared for me in my illness.

But I knew that no explanations could ever make Nemestronia understand our mutual relations or accept my views of them; to her a slave was a slave; she felt as unalterable a gulf between free man and slave as between mankind and cattle. I could only let her have her way, though I was inundated with misery at the thought of Agathemer's approaching agonies. I had been hotly wrathful with him and had meditated, as I dressed, what sort of punishment would befit his fault: now that Nemestronia had ordered him flogged my resentment against him had all oozed out of me and I was filled with sympathy for him and scorn of my cowardice in not protecting him. I glanced at him as the lashers stripped and bound him. He sent back at me a glance which said, as plain as words: