"Once more give me your hand, Mary, and now farewell. Will you sometimes think of me, and pray for me too, to your Redeemer?"
"Yes, yes, and you will not quite forget me, the poor cripple?"
"Certainly not, you good, kind girl! Perhaps we may some day meet again." With these words Antinous hurried down the hill and through the town to the Nile.
The moon had risen and was mirrored in the rough water. Just so had its image played upon the waves when Antinous had rescued Selene from the sea. The lad knew that Hadrian would be expecting him, still he did not seek his tent. A violent emotion had overpowered him; he restlessly paced up and down the river-bank rapidly reviewing in his memory the more prominent incidents of his past life. He seemed to hear again every word of the dialogue that had taken place yesterday between Hadrian and himself. Before his inward eye he saw once more his humble home in Bithynia, his mother, his brothers and sisters whom he should never see again. Once more he lived through the dreadful hour when he had deceived his beloved master and had been an incendiary. An overmastering dread fell upon him as he thought of Hadrian's wish to put him in the place of the man whom the prudent sovereign had chosen as his successor—a choice that was perhaps the direct outcome of his own crime. He, Antinous, who to-day could not think of the morrow, who always kept out of the way of the discourse of grave men because he found it so hard to follow their meaning, he who knew nothing but how to obey, he who was never happy but alone with his master and his dreaming, far from the bustle of the world—he, to be burdened with the purple, with anxiety, with a mountain-load of responsibility!
No, no; the idea was unheard-of—impossible! And yet Hadrian never gave up a wish he had once expressed in words. The future loomed before his soul like some overpowering foe. Suffering, unrest, and misfortune stared him in the face, turn which way he would.
What was the hideous fatality that threatened his sovereign? It was approaching, it must come if no one—aye, if no one should be found to stand between him and the impending blow, and to receive in his own breast—in his own heart, bared to receive the wound—the spear hurled by the vengeful god. And he—he, and he alone was the one who might do this.
The thought flashed into his mind like a sudden blaze of light; and if he should find the courage to devote himself to death for his dear master all his sins against him would be expiated; then—then—oh, how lovely a thought!—then might he not find entrance into the gates of that realm of bliss which Selene's prayers had opened to him? There he would see his mother again and his father, and by and bye his brothers and sisters—but now, at once in a few minutes Her whom he loved and who had trodden the ways of death before him.
An exquisite sense of hope such as he had never felt before flooded his soul. There lay the Nile—here was a boat. He gave it a strong push into the stream and with a powerful leap, as when hunting he had often sprung from rock to rock, he jumped into the boat. He had just seized an oar when Mastor, who had been desired by the Emperor to seek him, recognized him in the moonlight and desired him to return with him to the tents.
But Antinous did not obey. As he pushed out into the stream he called out:
"Greet my Lord from me—greet him lovingly, a thousand times, and tell him Antinous loved him more than his life. Fate demands a victim. The world cannot dispense with Hadrian, but Antinous is a mere nonentity, whom none will miss but Caesar, and for him Antinous flings himself into the jaws of death."