"Thou hast done it before," he declared. "Thou art right expert."
She laughed and leaned back in her chair.
"Name me the comely one," she commanded.
"Agrippa." There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes very slowly and faced him. Amusement made small lines about her eyes, and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness.
"And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound. Is it the Lady Herod?"
His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened his face. Presently he scowled.
"I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore."
"Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth. "Sore! I tell thee, that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!"
Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible. Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out and resolved into cold ashes in half that time. That it should endure years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles, all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple. Yet to reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at her side was a task she could not attempt.
"Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured. "Perchance the Jewess dropped madness from a philter in thy wine. And for simple cruelty, too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab."