for her life.  In truth all history could show few stranger scenes.  What was I to do?  If I yielded to her piteous prayers, it was probable that my own life and those of my wife and children would pay the price.  Yet how could I clap my hands in their Eastern fashion and summon the executioners to pierce those streaming eyes of hers?  “Rise, Augusta,” I said, for in this extremity of her shame I gave her back her title, “and tell me, you who are accustomed to such matters, how I can spare you who deal with the lives of others as well as with my own?”

“I thank you for that name,” she said as she struggled to her feet.  “I’ve heard it shouted by tens of thousands in the circus and from the throats of armies, but never yet has it been half so sweet to me as now from lips that have no need to utter it.  In times bygone I’d have paid you for this service with a province, but now Irene is so poor that, like some humble beggar-woman, she can but give her thanks.  Still, repeat it no more, for next time it will sound bitter.  What did you ask?  How you could save me, was it not?  Well, the thing seems simple.  In all that letter from Nicephorus there is no direct command that you should blind me.  The fellow says that you are to treat me as I treated you, and as I treated Constantine, the Emperor—­because I must.  Well, I imprisoned both of you.  Imprison me and you fulfil the mandate.  He says that if I die you are to report it, which shows that he does not mean that I must die.  Oh! the road of escape is easy, should you desire to travel it.  If you do not so desire, then, Olaf, I pray you as a last favour not to hand me over to common men.  I see that by your side still hangs that red sword of yours wherewith once I threatened you when you refused me at Byzantium.  Draw it, Olaf, and this time I’ll guide its edge across my throat.  So you will please Nicephorus and win the rewards that Irene can no longer give.  Baptised in her blood, what earthly glory is there to which you might not yet attain, you who had dared to lay hands upon the anointed flesh that even her worst foes have feared to touch lest God’s sudden curse should strike them dead?”

So she went on pouring out words with the strange eloquence that she could command at times, till I grew bewildered.  She who had lived in light and luxury, who had loved the vision of all bright and glorious things, was pleading for her sight to the man whom she had robbed of sight that he might never more behold the young beauty of her rival.  She who had imagination to know the greatness of her sins was pleading to be spared the death she dared not face.  She was pleading to me, who for years had been her faithful soldier, the captain of her own guard, sworn to protect her from the slightest ill, me upon whom, for a while, it had pleased her to lavish the wild passion of her imperial heart, who once had almost loved—­who, indeed, had kissed her on the lips.