Glyceria, in blissful delusion, yielded to his embrace, and in her happiness had almost silenced the warning voice in her heart, when Carinus' cheek suddenly touched hers, and she discovered that his face was beardless.
The most terrible thought darted through Glyceria's brain.
"Ha! Who are you? You are not Manlius. Be accursed! You are Carinus."
And, wresting herself with the strength of despair from the Cæsar's arms, she rushed toward the opposite side of the room and disappeared behind the curtains of the niche which concealed her couch, drawing the heavy folds together and hastily fastening the cords.
"You will not escape me!" shrieked Carinus, dashing in the fury of his passion toward the curtains, and tearing them down, while he tore apart the knot which confined the cords with his teeth.
But these few seconds had sufficed for Glyceria to light a vessel filled with some inflammable fluid and, at the instant Carinus succeeded in forcing the curtains apart, she poured the flaming contents over her couch and, while the blaze caught the light draperies, she herself sprang with a single bound upon the bed, now burning around her, whence like a terrible, destroying vision she shouted to the terror-stricken Augustus:
"Now, come!"
The next moment the hall was wrapped in flames. Like the fiend who gained an entrance into Heaven and was forced to fly thence, Carinus fled from the destroying fire, while Glyceria, seizing a burning coverlet, rushed from room to room, setting fire to each, and, dragging costly garments into the main hall, kindled those too.
In a few minutes the whole palace was in flames and, at the end of an hour, a sea of fire was rolling through Rome.
Carinus had been borne back to his palace senseless.