Like his father, Alexander was intent on the bloody struggle—­gazing upward with breathless interest as the combatants tried to fling each other into the yawning depth below them.  But at the same time he never for an instant forgot the insults he had endured outside.  How deeply he felt them was legible in his clouded face.  Only once did a smile pass over it—­when, toward the end of this first fight, the place was made lighter, he perceived in the row of seats next above him the daughter of his neighbor Skopas, pretty Ino, whom but a few days since he had vowed to love.  He was conscious of having treated her badly, and given her the right to call him faithless.  Toward her, indeed, he had been guilty of treachery, and it had really weighed on his soul.  Their eyes met, and she gave him to understand in the plainest way that she had heard him stigmatized as Caesar’s spy, and had believed the calumny.  The mere sight of him seemed to fill her with anger, and she did her utmost to show him that she had quickly found a substitute for him; and it was to Alexander, no doubt, that Ktesias, her young kinsman, who had long paid her his addresses, owed the kindliness with which Ino now gazed into his eyes.  This was some comfort to the luckless, banished lover.  On her account, at any rate, he need reproach himself no longer.  Diodoros was sitting opposite to him, and his attention, too, was frequently interrupted.

The flashing swords and torches in the hands of the Spirits of Light, and the dimly gleaming stars above their heads, had not so far dispelled the darkness as that the two young people could identify each other.  Diodoros, indeed, even throughout this absorbing fight, had frequently glanced at the imperial seats, but had failed to distinguish his beloved from the other women in Caracalla’s immediate vicinity.  But it now grew lighter, for, while the battle was as yet undecided, a fresh bark, full of Spirits of Light, flourishing their torches, was unexpectedly launched to support their comrades, and Heaven seemed to have sent them forth to win the fight, which had already lasted longer than the masters of the ceremonies had thought possible.

The wild shouts of the combatants and the yells of the wounded had long since drowned the soft music of the spheres above their heads.  The call of tubas and bugles rang without ceasing through the great building, to the frequent accompaniment of the most horrible sound of all in this hideous spectacle—­the heavy fall of a dead man dropping from above into the gulf.

But this dreadful thud was what gave rise to the loudest applause among the spectators, falling on their satiated ears as a new sound.  This frenzied fight in the air, such as had never before been seen, gave rise to the wildest delight, for it led the eye, which was wont in this place to gaze downward, in a direction in which it had never yet been attracted.  And what a glorious spectacle it was when black and white