“No?  You cast off our ties as lightly as you assumed them.  With a word you announce me wedded to you; with another you speak our divorcement.  And I, poor clod, suffer it?  The first, yes; but the last, no.  You see, I have fallen in love with you.”

She turned her clear eyes away from him and waited calmly till she could escape.

“You have spent your greatest argument in persuading me to be a king.  Kings, lady, are essentially tyrants, in these bad days.  Wherefore, if I am to be one, I shall not fail to be the other.  And you—­ah, you!  Will you endure the oppressor that you made?”

There was enough that was different in his manner and his words for her to believe that something worthy of attention was to follow.  She looked at him, now.

“This roof, since the alienation of John to my wife, is mine empire.  Within it, I am despot.  From its lady mistress, the Greek, to the meanest slave, I have homage and subjection.  Even thou wilt be submissive to me—­for having lost one wife through indulgence, I shall be most tyrannical to the one yet in my power!”

She drew herself up in splendid defiance.

“I have not submitted!” she said.  “I will not submit!”

“No?  Nothing stands in your way now but yourself.  Your supplanter hath removed herself.  And I shall make your submission easy.”

She turned from him and would have hurried back into the Greek’s andronitis, but he put himself in her way.

“Listen!” he said, suddenly lifting his hand.

In the stillness which she finally was able to observe over the tumultuous beating of her enraged heart, a profound moan of great volume as from immense but remote struggle came into the corridor.  Through it at times cut a sharp accession of sound, as if violence heightened at intervals, and steadily over it pulsated the throb of tireless siege-engines.  It was the groan of the City of Delight in mortal anguish.

“This,” he said in a soft voice touching his breast, “or that,” motioning toward the dying city.  “Choose.  And by midnight!”

While she stood, gazing at him transfixed with the horror of her predicament, there was the sweeping of garments, the soft tinkle of pendants as they struck together, and Salome, the actress, was beside the pair.  Close at hand was Amaryllis.  The Greek showed for the first time discomfiture and an inability to rise to the demand of the occasion.  The glance she shot at Laodice was full of cold anger that she had permitted herself to be surprised in company with Philadelphus.

Philadelphus drew back a step, but made no further movement toward withdrawing.  Laodice would have retreated, but the actress stood in her way.  With a motion full of stately indignation, Salome turned to Amaryllis.