‘Must go! And what is there then to compel him?’ said NeÆra quickly, in surprise.

The Suburan’s eyes twinkled as he shot a sidelong glance at her beautiful face.

‘Nothing but yourself,’ he said quietly; ‘that is why I asked you to persuade him now rather than leave it later.’

NeÆra wrinkled her pretty brows and perused her companion’s dark-hued shaggy face with an anxious, inquiring look. Then she shook her head.

‘I cannot understand,’ she said; ‘to say that of me seems to be nonsense.’

‘Don’t you see?’ exclaimed Cestus, reaching out his arm, and laying his thick forefinger on her hand, as it rested on her knee, ‘don’t you see? When you become the wife of Martialis he will take you to Rome, and by and by your—Masthlion will be unable to live without the sight of you, so he will assuredly follow. It is as plain and sure as the sun in heaven.’

The faintest shadow of a smile rested on her lips, and she dropped her gaze from his face to the burning logs. The delicate lids drooped over the lustre of her eyes, and a warmer tint suffused her skin.

‘It will be time when I go to Rome,’ she murmured; ‘wait till that comes to pass.’

‘Therefore you will not help to persuade him to go now, as I recommend?’

‘I will not say a word.’

‘Think of the blessed change—the sights and shows, such as you never dream of. When you are there you will say, “How did I live in such a dog’s hole as that?”—meaning Surrentum.’

‘I think I have passed too many pleasant days here to think that ever,’ replied NeÆra; ‘but my own inclinations have nothing to do with it, nor shall they.’

‘Then again,’ continued Cestus, more artfully, ‘the Prefect has been a long time in Capreae, and cannot be expected to remain there much longer. He will return to Rome, and with him Martialis.’

This was a subtle stroke, but he got no reply, save only a low rippling laugh and a shake of her head, which was turned persistently towards the fire. Whereupon he shrugged his [pg 266]shoulders, and silence fell between them for a considerable space, which he employed in fixedly watching her as she sat with her hands clasped across her knee, apparently lost in a reverie.

The bright glow of the fire bathed her face and figure, and threw them into striking relief in the now dark room. The Suburan, with his elbow on his knee and his head dropped sideways on his hand, feasted his eyes with the lovely picture she made, which drew no small portion of its charm from the grace of her unconsciousness. It awoke his mind to a strange activity. Out of the dim past he conjured up scenes which remained engrained in his mind as sharp and distinct as events of yesterday. Amongst these was a bright and vivid morning on the Janiculum Hill in Rome; the glorious city spread beneath glittering in the morning beams.... A beautiful child dancing and skipping in pure delight; a hasty dash under a high garden wall, and down a narrow obscure lane.... Then again the depth of a dark, rainy, hot, summer night, when he entered that self-same room, weary with travel and prolonged toil of search for his destination.... The deposit of his tiny sleeping burden, and the astonished faces of the two inmates of the room.

Fortune had favoured him; it was the reward of his humanity. As he looked on the heedless maiden, his heart warmed with satisfaction; and for some brief moments, he felt at peace with all and everything. How exquisite she would look clothed as a white-handed patrician and set in the marble halls of a palace. Her beauty had utterly conquered him. It was a new and novel experience to have lived in daily contact and companionship with a being so delicate. Her sprightliness and spirit charmed him, whilst her purity and gentleness softened and quelled him. It was no ordinary degree of pride which tingled in his breast at the fact, that she was more indebted to and more dependent upon him than any one, although she knew it not. Should she learn now from his lips? The heart of this rough, vice-sodden, crime-laden man beat like a girl’s as he contemplated the action, and gazed on the exquisite profile before him. How those deep-fringed orbs would glow and flash in wonder, and the delicious curves of her lips tremble with emotion! His [pg 267]cool reason was fast departing, and his tremor increasing, as the fascination before his eyes hurried him on to the consummation of his sudden desire. In two or three minutes more he could not have resisted the temptation to hold the heart and soul of the fair girl breathless at his disposal. All question of policy had fled, and he was preparing for his task, when the grate and thud of a bolt being drawn, sounded on their ears through the open door.

‘That is father!’ exclaimed NeÆra, rousing herself suddenly and turning round in expectation.

A deep sigh, either of relief or disappointment, escaped the lips of Cestus, and he straightened up his body.

The creak of the potter’s workshop door was followed by his step, and the next moment he entered the room and advanced toward them. They looked at him in astonishment, for a wonderful change was in his aspect. He was clearly in a state of great mental excitement, not to speak of evident delight. The soot of the furnace on this occasion rather overspread and subdued the reddish incrustation of clay on his person, and in his hand he carried a globular vessel of dull, coarse-looking glass. He held it up before him as he entered, in such an eager manner, as to draw their attention to it at once, without a word from his lips. His deep-set eyes sparkled in the firelight with infinite vivacity, as they flung their flashing glances first from one to the other, and then to the cup in his hand, and back again. His eager hurried step brought him up to the Suburan and the maiden almost at a run, and then he stopped short, with the vessel uplifted in one hand, and the forefinger of the other pointing to it. A strange laugh, or chuckle of supreme joy or exultation, escaped him, and he moved the article, with its accompanying index finger, first before the face of NeÆra and then of Cestus. They arose silently from their seats and stared at the potter with strange wonder, and something of alarm, at this unusual proceeding on the part of a man of habitual reserve and serenity. It was a spectacle almost as little to be expected, as for a statue of the grave goddess and her owl to step down from its plinth and cut a caper on a temple floor. They saw that his features and his frame were trembling with extreme agitation; and failing to comprehend its cause in a [pg 268]glass cup of not the slightest pretensions to use or ornament, they remained, with anxious gaze, to await some further development of such unwonted symptoms.

‘Look—it is done—it is found—I have found it—I, Masthlion!’ gasped the potter, with another laugh. ‘At last—at last!’ he cried, rolling and smoothing the vessel in his grimy hands, with the ecstasy of a miser fondling his treasure heaps.

Grave doubts arose in the mind of Cestus as to the actual state of his kinsman’s mind; and giving him a glance of suspicion, and another of contempt on the paltry object of his delight, he growled as follows—‘As far as I can see, potter, it is a thing that ought to be well lost beyond redemption, and a thing of regret, if found again in any dusthole.’

Masthlion vented another chuckling laugh, and turned his eyes on the face of NeÆra, who rested her hand on his shoulder, and touched the glass with the slender fingers of her other hand. Timidity and doubt were in her actions and on her countenance. She returned his gaze with affectionate concern and said soothingly, ‘You seemed pleased to have found it, father. Had you lost it long? Why do you prize it? Tell me!’

‘It has never been lost; nevertheless I have but now found it. Ha, ha! Child, do you think I have taken leave of my wits? And, indeed, I think I have, for joy,’ laughed Masthlion, straining the girl to his breast and giving her a fervent kiss. ‘Go, bring your mother!’

NeÆra glided away into the upper regions of the house on her mission; and, at the request of Masthlion, Cestus took a brand from the fire and lighted an iron lamp which hung from the ceiling. By the time the feeble flame threw its cheerless light upon the scene, NeÆra returned with Tibia. The latter, with probably a hint of her husband’s unusual humour, came forward in a peculiar roundabout fashion, as though she were describing the segment of a circle with the potter as a centre. Her face, wreathed in wonder and some fear, was riveted on his, throughout her course, as if her head were magnetised. When she arrived finally on the opposite side of him, she stopped. Masthlion regarded her with an amused smile, and Cestus grinned, almost audibly. NeÆra, standing at one side, [pg 269]glanced from one to the other, with a slight wrinkling of her brows, and drew a step nearer Tibia; but the dame remained absorbed in her husband, and indifferent to the amusement her odd manner had caused.

‘Husband!’ she ejaculated at last. ‘What is the matter?’

‘’Tis what I sent to tell you,’ he said, laughing. ‘Look!’ He seized her hand, and held up the vessel before her eyes in the same way he had done to the others. ‘Here is the result of twenty-five years’ toil and patience. Here, at last, is success, after disappointments and bitterness beyond my tongue to tell. Do you remember the old times, wife? Ay, can you ever forget them? They were too well ground into you—starvation and rags are not easily forgotten. I was the cause; and though you often blamed me and reproached me in your heart, you never murmured.’

Tibia shook her head gently.

‘Well, well, I deserved it, at least. I was a man possessed with an idea and no money—an unlucky combination for mortals who are obliged to eat to live. I learnt my trade as a youth, and one day in my master’s shop I chanced upon a piece of refuse glass of peculiar quality. I showed it to my master, but he scarcely looked at it. He was a man of no ideas beyond his daily work. There was that about this piece of glass, however, which set me thinking, and filled me with an idea of such strength as to be called infatuation. It has been like a stone of Sisyphus to me till this day, and now I have conquered it. For twenty-five years I have worked to discover the secret of that stray piece of glass, more or less madly—eagerly—according to circumstances, but always constantly. My father, when he died, left me a little hoard of money. Then I left my master and built a workshop of my own. It was then, too, I married my sweetheart; and like a young, eager, hot-blooded, thoughtless lad, would have laughed to scorn the notion of a space of twenty-five years being necessary to the working out of my problem, had it been told to me at that time. “Come,” I said to myself, “my money will keep us a couple of years, and by that time, I shall have found out my secret, and fortune will lie before me.” In two years I was as far off the end as ever—do you remember, Tibia? In three years I was further still, for we had struggled on, in vain [pg 270]hope that each day would solve the mystery, and my patrimony had come to an end in the process. Every experiment was as futile as the one before it, and I had become numb even to bitter disgust and despair. Ah, and how I worked! Night and day—it was like a fever dream. And you, Tibia, would come to help—it was your presence that helped more than your hands, wife. Then came the day when the last coin had been spent in fuel for the furnace, and the experiment had failed as miserably as all the others before it. It was dusk as I tested my work and found it wanting, and I sat down stupid and sick. I began to dream horribly, or else a fever had reached my brain. I sat there like a helpless log, as if bound hand and foot, whilst the walls seemed to dance around me in a giddy whirl, and the roof to rear up and swoop down upon me with a frightful sensation that will live in my memory till I die. Then in that dread hour it was you who crept in beside me. Yet you did nothing but lay your hand silently on mine, and that saved me. You remember it, Tibia?—I cried like a girl. I was overwrought in mind and body. I was like the steel blade which is strained in a curve beyond its strength, and then snaps, to spring and quiver no more. That night we begged our supper, and next morning I rose another being. I was a dreaming youth no longer, and I set to work to make pots like my dull master, and allow my phantasy to find its opportunities for indulgence, when time and means allowed. I did not do this from change of inclination, for my ambition burned as strongly as ever; but to live was a necessity. The gods gave me patience, and I toiled for livelihood, and for means to give me leisure to resume my search. The gods have blessed me in both: we are beyond fear of want, and I have, at last, discovered the secret which led me on, like a will-o’-the-wisp, for all these years. Here it is to bless us—me, for my toil, and you, wife, for your patience and long-suffering! I was cruel in those early years. Many a time since then have I acknowledged it. But I was possessed—eaten up too much with my own mad hopes and visions to be able to see a wife pinched and starved. Heaven knows, wife, what your thoughts were in those days! You never spoke, and I dare not ask. Now I may be able to repay—who [pg 271]knows? At least the secret is found, whatever it may lead to. If it was ever known to the world before I know not; but I have heard the scholars say, that the most ancient people, the Egyptians, in their days of power, were skilled in works beyond the comprehension of these days. Yet their knowledge is all buried, forgotten, lost, like their temples and cities. What they knew and discovered will have to be sought for again. Thus this matter of mine may once have been known well enough, when the world was ages younger, in the days of the giants. Let that be or not; it is of no consequence to me or any one. It is enough for me to think, that no one lives and breathes who saw, or ever heard, of such a glass cup as this which now I hold. What would you say, now, if it were impossible to break this vessel? What would the wealthy patrician think, if his costly glass treasure, goblet, or heirloom should be of such composition that his careless slaves should be powerless to harm it?—that the delicate fabric, exquisitely cut and designed, brilliantly pictured and tinted, instead of being dashed to fragments on his floor by the clumsy fingers of a slave, should be so durable as to survive the mishap, and be lifted again, with nothing worse than a dent, which a skilful artist could restore? And of the priceless gem of the artist, so of the humble vessels of the kitchen. That stray fragment of glass which set my brain on fire, and gave me five-and-twenty years of toil and unceasing thought, by some strange trick of chance, had been fused with certain properties in certain proportions. Chance had accomplished what it has taken me all these years to find out, and there, at last, its composition is developed. Watch now and you shall see how this piece of glass is matched by none in existence!’

Masthlion’s face was flushed with tumultuous speech. His trembling hand pulled his wife aside to give himself more room. Then he lifted the glass bowl as high as possible above his head, and threw it down on the floor, with all the force he could command. There followed no crash and flying of countless splinters, but only a dull thud, and the hardly tried glass rolled over lazily two or three times with a flattened side; otherwise it had suffered no damage. The potter drew himself up and looked round with pride and triumph in his eyes.