Sophronia, sobbing, threw her arms around her sister's neck. In rapid alternations of feeling the shining vision of a happy life passed before her mind. She saw her loving old father who guarded her so anxiously from every breath of air; she saw the youth whose pure love promised her long years of joy in the future. The girl's strength of mind vanished before this alluring picture, and she sank on the bosom of her sister, who, with a brave though sad face, clasped her in her arms as a mythological goddess of war would embrace an angel that belonged to the realms of another deity.

"Hasten hence," she said, throwing her ample himation around her sister's shoulders, and fastening the golden balteus about her hips. "You can follow my slave safely. No one will notice the exchange, especially amid the noisy tumult of the circus."

"No, I cannot accept this sacrifice," cried Sophronia, struggling with her own heart. "God forbids it."

"Your God is the God of Love," said Glyceria. "If on account of this God of Love you will not save yourself, I swear that this day shall long be mentioned by the world as a day of horrors. I know all the formulas, before which the beings of darkness tremble, at whose utterance the solid earth is shaken and blazing comets dash across the sky, sending down pestilences upon the living. If you sacrifice yourself to your God, I will sacrifice Rome to mine, and will destroy it so utterly that the centuries will find only fragments of its royal purple."

The pallid girl trembled in her frowning sister's arms.

The latter now quietly fastened the anadem she had taken from her head in her sister's hair, and drew her veil over her face.

"There, now you are safe. If you are asked who rescued you, say that it was a stranger. I wish to cause no one sorrow. Never mention my name."

The weeping girl embraced her sister, from whom she could not bear to part. Glyceria herself urged her away:

"Go, hasten. Do not kiss me; it is not well to kiss me. Destruction is on my lips."

Yet Sophronia did kiss her, and at the same instant Ævius entered with the guards who accompanied him.

"We are betrayed!" shrieked Glyceria, placing herself before her sister to protect her. Then, with savage fury, she cried: "Who sent you to this place, miserable sycophant? You have made a mistake; this is a prison, not a bacchanalian revel.""It is a golden cage, in which I find two doves instead of one."

"Put your insipid jests into rhyme, but spare me their tasteless folly. And now, go!"

"Very willingly if you will come with me; but the Augustus sent me here."

Glyceria hastily whispered to Sophronia: "Do not betray that you are my sister, or our father is lost, too."

Then she turned to the soldiers.

"Insolent knaves! Do you know me? I am the terrible Glyceria who sends down a rain of fire upon you when you are in camp, who makes the rivers overflow their banks before you, and in the midst of summer brings winter upon your bands so that you are swept away like flies? Do you no longer remember Trivius, whom in my wrath I transformed into a stag, and did not restore his human form until the hounds had torn him? Did you see before my palace the flesh-colored caryatides, who keep guard before my door and seem to follow every passer-by with their eyes? They were slaves who disobeyed me, and whom with a single breath I transformed to stone. Do you wish to be fixed to these walls as statues, or changed into wild beasts to rend one another to-morrow in the amphitheatre? Which of you dares to raise his hand; which of you will bar my way?"

The soldiers shrank back in superstitious terror. Ævius alone stepped before her.

"Divinely beautiful woman, it would be useless trouble to transform these fellows to brutes. You ought rather to change my heart into stone, that it may have no feeling for you. But now permit me to conduct this Christian maiden to the CÆsar, who will gladly see you the next time, but now desires to behold her. Though you should vouchsafe to wreak your utmost wrath upon my innocent head, I can do nothing else. My head and my heart are at your service, but Carinus has commanded my hands to bring this maiden before him."

Glyceria whispered impetuously to her pale-faced sister:

"Now a greater horror than death awaits you. But be strong. Under the balteus which I fastened around you is a sharp dagger. You are a Roman; I need say no more."

She pressed Sophronia's hand as she spoke, and without vouchsafing Ævius another glance, hastened through the ranks of the soldiers, who swiftly made way for her.