“Tinai, (Adonai,) my husband, keep thee in the hollow of his hand.”
“How shameless! dost thou dare so much!”
“What mean’st thou, my Cœlius?”
“Sit thou there,” he answered, “till I show thee my picture.” He pointed her, as he spoke, to a new sarcophagus, upon which she placed herself submissively. Then, with a wand in his hand, he, himself seated upon another coffin of stone, pointed her to a curtain which covered one of the sides of the chamber. “Behind that curtain, Aurelia, is the last work of my hands; but before I unveil it to thine eyes, let me tell thee its melancholy history. It will not need many words for this. Much of it is known to thee already. How I found thee in Rome, when I was there a captive—how I loved thee, and how I believed in thy assurances of love; all these things thou know’st. We wedded, and I brought thee, a Roman woman, held a barbarian by my people, into the palace of one of the proudest families of all Etruria. Shall I tell thee that I loved thee still, that I love thee even now, when I have most reason to hate thee, when I know thy perjury, thy cold heart, thy hot lust, thy base, degrading passions!”
“Hold, my lord—say not these things to my grief and thy dishonor. They wrong me, not less than thy own name. These things, poured into thine ear by some secret enemy, are false!”
“Thou wilt not swear it.”
“By all the gods of Rome—”
“And of what avail, and how binding the oath taken in the names of the barbarian deities of Rome.”
“By the Etrurian—”
“Perjure not thyself, woman, but hear me.”