Part 9 (1/2)
”You have come late. Very late.”
Manlius, with suppressed fury, answered:
”Is love a fruit that becomes overripe if it waits long?”
Glyceria looked at Manlius in horror.
”What is the matter with you that you speak to me of love?”
”Did you not summon me that we might whisper together of rapture, bliss, and sweet delights?”
”Once your words would have given me pleasure; now horror seizes me when you speak in this way.”
”Are you not convinced that your beauty has such magic power that every man who beholds you forgets every woman he has ever seen?”
replied Manlius, half drawing his sword from its sheath.
Glyceria looked into the youth's face as though she were gazing into impenetrable darkness, and asked:
”Even the one who is lying dead at this moment?”
Manlius started back, his breath failed, his face grew corpselike in its pallor. He strove to p.r.o.nounce Sophronia's name, but his lips would not form the word, and staggering back, he was obliged to lean against a pillar.
Glyceria went toward him, her staring eyes fixed upon his face as if she wished to read his inmost soul.
”Manlius Sinister!” she said calmly. ”My dreams have told me that you will kill me, and I know that the hand beneath your chlamys is clutching your sword-hilt. That will be no grief to me. My anguish is that you see in me your promised wife's murderess.”
Manlius sighed heavily, and a secret shudder shook his whole frame. In a voice that seemed to come from the grave, he asked:
”How was she killed? Was she torn by wild beasts? Or did greedy flames devour her tender body? Speak, Hetaera. Tell me clearly and minutely how she was tortured to death. I _will_ hear.”
”She was not dragged to the scenes of torture, but to Carinus'
orgies.”
”Ah!” shrieked Manlius in unutterable fury, covering his face. Then, removing his hands, he said quietly: ”Go on; omit nothing. Describe step by step the outrage, and in what way my idol was dragged through the mire. Speak!”
”Nothing of that kind happened. A Roman woman, who wished to rescue her, exchanged garments with her in the prison; and when this plan was baffled, she concealed a dagger in Sophronia's girdle and the girl killed herself before any man's hand touched her.”
Tears streamed from the young soldier's eyes; his sword fell from his hand.
”Ye G.o.ds, bless that Roman woman for the sake of the dagger. Do you not know who it was?”
”She does not wish you to be told.”
Manlius drew a long breath, as if relieved from a heavy burden.
”I thank you for these tidings.”
There was something terrible in this grat.i.tude.