“Bah! It is no murex, not a sea snail but a fish. What is the signification?”

“Lady, to one so high, ever-increasing happiness.”

“Away! you are all wrong. Happiness is not where you deem it. False thou art, false to thy creed. Thou speak of a divine ray in every man and woman! an emanation from the Father of Light, quivering, battling, straining to escape out of its earthly envelope and soar to its source!—thou speak of this, and in all thy doings and devisings seekest what is sordid and dark!”

The gloomy man folded his cloak about him, and looking at her from under his penthouse brows answered:—

“Thou launchest forth against me without reason. Knowest thou what is a comet? It is a star that circles about the sun and from it drinks in all the illumination it can absorb, like as the thirsty soil in summer sucks in the falling rain, or the fields the outflow of the Alban Lake; then it flies away into space, and as it flies it sheds its effulgence, becoming ever more dim till it reaches infinite darkness and is there black in the midst of absolute nigritude. Then it turns and comes back to replenish its urn.”

“Nay,” said Domitia, “that can never be. When all light is gone, then all desire for return goes likewise. I know that in myself—I—I am such a comet. When I was a child I longed, I hungered for the light, and in my days of adolescence it was the same, only stronger—it was as a famine. I was the poor comet sweeping up towards my sun; but where my sun was, that—in the vast abyss of infinity—I knew not. I sought and found not, I sought and shed my glory, till there was but a faint glimmer left in me; [pg 225]and now—now all light is extinguished, and with it desire to know, to love, to be happy, to return.”

“Madam, you, as the comet, are reaching your apogee, your extreme limit; you must shed all your light before you can return to the source of light.”

“What! is that your philosophy? The Father of Light sends forth his ray to expire in utter darkness, predestined this ray of light to extinction. If so—then He is not good. And yet,” she sighed, “it is so. I am such. In blackness of night. Look you, Elymas, when I was a child, I laughed and danced; I cannot dance, I can but force a laugh now. I once loved the flowers and the butterflies; I love them no more. My light is gone. The faculty of enjoyment is gone with it. Do I want to return? To what? To the source of light that launched me into this misery? No, not into that cold and cruel fate. Let me go on my inky way, I have no more light to lose—I look only to go out as a fallen star and leave nothing behind me.”

“What! when a great future is before you?”

“What future? you have none to offer me that I value. Away with your hints concerning the purple—it is the sable of mourning to me.”

She panted. The tears came into her eyes.

“It is you who have wrecked my life—you—you. It was you who devised that crime—when I was snatched away from the only man I loved—the only man with whom I could have been happy—whom I—” she turned aside and hid her face. Then recovering herself, but with a cheek glistening with tears, she said: “I admit it, I love still, and ever shall love. And he loves me. He has taken none to wife, for he thinks on me. There, could darkness be deeper than [pg 226]my now condition? And you did it, you betrayed me into the hands—” she had sufficient self-control not to say to whom, before this man and her slave.

“Lady, it is not I, but Destiny.”

“And you, with your tortuous ways, work to ends that you desire, and excuse it by saying, It is Destiny.”

“What, discussing the lore of emanations, little woman?” asked the Emperor, coming suddenly up.

Elymas stood back and assumed a deferential attitude. Titus waved him to withdraw, and was obeyed. Then he took Domitia by the hand.

“A philosopher, are you?”

“No, I ask questions, but get no answers that content me.”

“Ah! you asked a favor of me the other day and spiced it with a sneer—your jibes hit me.”

“I meant not to give pain.”

“I have come to you touching this very matter. I am not sure, child, that the scandal is not greater so long as you and Domitian remain linked together, and pulling opposite ways, than if you were parted. Your quarrels are now the talk of Rome, and many a cutting jest is put into your pretty mouth at our expense; invented by others, attributed to you.”

“You will have us divorced!” her breath came quick and short.

“Listen to what I propose. Domitia, I am not well. I have this accursed Roman fever on me.”

“Sire, I mark suffering in your face.”

“It has been vexing me for some days, and it is my intent to leave Rome and be free from business and take my cure at CutiliÆ—our old estate in the Sabine country. Perhaps the air, the waters of the old home, [pg 227]the nest of our divine family—” his mouth twitched, but there was a sad expression in his face—“they may do me good. It is something, Domitia, to stand on the soil that was turned by one’s forbears, when they bent as humble farmers over the plough. They were honest men and happy; and when one is down at heart, there is naught like home—the old home where are the bones of one’s ancestors, though they may have been yeomen, and one a commissioner, and another an usurer, and so on. They were honest men. Aye! the rate-collector, he was an honest man. Here all is false, and unreal, and—Domitia—I feel that I want to stand on the soil where my worthy, humble, dear old people worked and worshipped, and laid them down to die.”

“You are downcast indeed,” said Domitia.

“And because downcast, I have been brooding over your troubles, little sister-in-law. Come! I did something for your poor Lamia,—I made him consul, and I will do more. Can you be patient and tarry till my strength is restored? I shall return from my family farm in rude health, I trust, and by the Gods! the first matter I will then take in hand will be yours. I know what my brother is. By Jupiter Capitolinus! if Rome should ever have him as its prince, it will weep tears of blood. I know his savage humor and his sullen mind. No, Domitia, you cannot be happy with him. A cruel wrong was done you, and when I return from CutiliÆ I will right it. You shall be separated!”

She threw herself at his feet.

He smiled, and withdrawing from her clasp, said:—

“I will do more than that for your very good friend, in whom you still take such a lively interest. [pg 228]I shall find means to advance him to some foreign post—he knows Antioch, I will give him the proconsulship of Syria and Cilicia, and so move him away from Rome. And then—” he took a turn, looked smilingly at Domitia, and said,—“I do not see that you need mope at Gabii. You know Antioch; you were there for some years. It is, I believe, not well for a governor to take his wife with him; she has the credit of being a very horse-leech to the province. But I can trust thee, little woman! There, no thanks, I seek mine own interest, and to protect our divine images and the new gilding from the rasp of that tongue. That is the true motive of my making this offer. Do not thank me. On my return from CutiliÆ you may reckon on me.”

Then hastily brushing away her thanks, and evading her arms, extended to clasp him, he walked from the terrace.

“Euphrosyne!” cried Domitia, “did you hear! The comet has reached its extreme limit, it is turning—it is drawing to the light—to hope. Happiness is near—ah!”

In her excitement she had struck her jewel-case that stood on the marble balustrade, and sent it, with all its costly contents, flying down the precipice into the thronged lanes at the back of the forum in a glittering rain.

“Ye Gods!” gasped Domitia, “the omen! O ye Gods! the bad omen.”

“Lady,” said Euphrosyne, “all is not lost”

“What remains? Ah! the Fish!”

“Yes, mistress dear, when all else is lost, remember the Fish.”