"To me it is an incomprehensible mystery. Who has the power to look into the depths of my heart and read its feelings? Have my dreams betrayed me, that some one knows I love your daughter, whom I saw four years ago, and have been unable since to forget? And who can the woman be who seeks to save another woman whose love shuts out her own?"
The old man's face darkened. The wine stood untouched a long time before the two who, during the conversation, had become perfectly sober. But their hearts, which the wine had opened, remained unveiled.
"Let me look at the ring more closely," said Mesembrius in a low tone.
Manlius held out his hand. The stone in the ring was a wonderfully carved cameo—the white bust of a beautiful woman, with Greek features, upon a purplish-yellow ground.
Mesembrius frowned gloomily as he examined the cameo; he averted his head, again gazed fixedly at the ring, and at last with a gesture of loathing, thrust it from him and bowed his gray head despairingly on his breast.
"Why do you look so sad?" asked Manlius. "Do you know this ring? Do you know its owner!"
"I know her," replied the old man in a hollow tone.
"Speak, who is it?"
"Who is it?" repeated Mesembrius with flashing eyes. "Who is it? A shameless hetaira, a loathsome courtesan, whose breath brings pestilence and contagion to the inhabitants of Rome, whose existence is a blot upon the work of creation; who has been cursed by her father so many times that, if all his execrations were fulfilled, no grass would grow upon the earth where she sets her foot, and compassion itself would turn from her in abhorrence."