Cethegus cast a look at those who stood outside; they had evidently heard all. Glancing at Antonina, he now went to the door and closed it carefully. Antonina thanked him by a look. She again drew near her husband, but he had thrown himself upon the ground before his couch, striking his clenched fist upon his brow and stammering:
"O Justinian! have I deserved this from you? It is too much, too much!"
And the strong man burst into tears.
At this Cethegus contemptuously turned away.
"Farewell," he said in a low voice to Procopius, "It disgusts me to see men blubber!"
CHAPTER XVII.
Lost in thought, the Prefect left the tent, and went round the camp to the rather distant outwork, where he had entrenched himself and his Isaurians before the Gate of Honorius.
It was situated on the south side of the city, near the harbour wall of Classis, and the way led partly along the sea-shore.
Although the lonely wanderer was at this moment preoccupied by the great thought which had become the pulse of his life, although he was oppressed by anxiety as to how Belisarius--that man of impulse--would act, and worried with impatience for the arrival of the answer from the Franks, his attention was yet involuntarily attracted by the singular appearance of the landscape, the sky, and the sea.
It was October; but the season had seemed for weeks to have altered its laws. For almost two months it had never rained. Not a cloud, not a stripe of mist had been seen in this usually so humid part of the country. But now, quite suddenly--it was towards sunset--Cethegus remarked in the east, above the sea horizon, a single, dense, and coal-black cloud.