A race, no doubt, was to be held there this morning, for slaves were raking the sand smooth, and hanging flowers about a dais, which was no doubt intended for Caesar.  Was it to be her fate to see the dreadful man from the place where she was hiding from him?  Her heart began to beat faster, and at the same time questions crowded on her excited brain, each bringing with it fresh anxiety for those she loved, of whom, till now, she had been thinking with calm reassurance.

Whither had Alexander fled?

Had her father and Philip succeeded in concealing themselves in the sculptor’s work-room?

Could Diodoros have escaped in time to reach the harbor with Polybius and Praxilla?

How had Argutis contrived that her letter should reach Caesar’s hands without too greatly imperiling himself?

She was quite unconscious of any guilt toward Caracalla.  There had been, indeed, a strong and strange attraction which had drawn her to him; even now she was glad to have been of service to him, and to have helped him to endure the sufferings laid upon him by a cruel fate.  But she could never be his.  Her heart belonged to another, and this she had confessed in a letter—­perhaps, indeed, too late.  If he had a heart really capable of love, and had set it on her, he would no doubt think it hard that he should have bestowed his affections on a girl who was already plighted to another, even when she first appeared before him as a suppliant, though deeply moved by pity; still, he had certainly no right to condemn her conduct.  And this was her firm conviction.

If her refusal roused his ire—­if her father’s prophecy and Philostratus’s fears must be verified, that his rage would involve many others besides herself in ruin, then—­But here her thought broke off with a shudder.

Then she recalled the hour when she had been ready and willing to be his, to sacrifice love and happiness only to soften his wild mood and protect others from his unbridled rage.  Yes, she might have been his wife by this time, if he himself had not proved to her that she could never gain such power over him as would control his sudden fits of fury, or obtain mercy for any victim of his cruelty.  The murder of Vindex and his nephew had been the death-blow of this hope.  She best knew how seriously she had come to the determination to give up every selfish claim to future happiness in order that she might avert from others the horrors which threatened them; and now, when she knew the history of the Divine Lord of the Christians, she told herself that she had acted at that moment in a manner well-pleasing to that sublime Teacher.  Still, her strong common sense assured her that to sacrifice the dearest and fondest wish of her heart in vain would not have been right and good, but foolish.

The evil deeds which Caracalla was now preparing to commit he would have done even if she were at his side.  Of what small worth would she have seemed to him, and to herself!—­When this tyranny should be overpast, when he should be gone to some other part of his immense empire, if those she loved were spared she could be happy—­ah! so happy with the man to whom she had given her heart—­as happy as she would have been miserable if she had become the victim to unceasing terrors as Caesar’s wife.