"A runaway slave," he smiled. "Then I----"
She nodded. "You may think it fantastic, but that was what Monsieur Ivanitch feared when he learned last night what you were. And I----" she stopped again. "I could not believe that such things were possible----"
"They aren't," said Rowland, quietly.
His quiet voice steadied her.
"It is a strange tale," she said with a slow smile, "but you must hear it all. Only a runaway slave who succeeded in reaching the Golden Bough and broke it was entitled to challenge the Priest in single combat. If he--killed him, he reigned in the place of the priest, King of the Wood----"
"REX NEMORENSIS----" muttered Rowland.
"You've heard?"
"I read it--there," pointing to the pedestal. And as he looked, the meaning of the double bust came to him, the anguished face of the older man and the frowning face of the youth who was to take his place.
"He was afraid of me," he said. "I understand."
"The legend tells that the Golden Bough," she went on quickly, "was that which at the Sybil's bidding Æneas plucked before he visited the world of the dead, the flight of the slave was the flight of Orestes, his combat with the priest, a relic of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. A rule of succession by the sword which was observed down to imperial times----"