Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis (1897 Curtin translation).djvu/76

60 his scarlet tunic; his breathing grew short, and the expressions that fell from his lips were broken. For the first time, too, he was so near her. His thoughts grew disturbed; he felt a flame in his veins which he tried in vain to quench with wine. Not wine, but her marvellous face, her bare arms, her maiden breast heaving under the golden tunic, and her form hidden in the white folds of the peplus, intoxicated him more and more. Finally, he seized her arm above the wrist, as he had done once at Aulus’s, and drawing her toward him whispered with trembling lips,—

“I love thee, Callina,—divine one.”

“Let me go, Marcus,” said Lygia.

But he continued, his eyes mist-covered, “Love me, my goddess!”

But at that moment was heard the voice of Acte, who was reclining on the other side of Lygia.

“Cæsar is looking at you both.”

Vinicius was carried away by sudden anger at Cæsar and at Acte. Her words had broken the charm of his intoxication. To the young man even a friendly voice would have seemed repulsive at such a moment; but he judged that Acte wished purposely to interrupt his conversation with Lygia. So, raising his head and looking over the shoulder of Lygia at the young freedwoman, he said with malice,—

“The hour has passed, Acte, when thou didst rest near Cæsar’s side at banquets, and they say that blindness is threatening thee; how then canst thou see him?”

But she answered as if in sadness: “Still I see him. He, too, has short sight, and is looking at thee through an emerald.”

Everything that Nero did roused attention, even in those nearest him; hence Vinicius was alarmed. He regained self-control, and began imperceptibly to look toward Cæsar. Lygia, who, embarrassed at the beginning of the banquet, had seen Nero as in a mist, and afterward, occupied by the presence and conversation of Vinicius, had not looked at him at all, turned to him eyes at once curious and terrified.

Acte spoke truly. Cæsar had bent over the table, half closed one eye, and holding before the other a round polished emerald, which he used, was looking at them. For a moment his glance met Lygia’s eyes and the heart of the maiden was straitened with terror. When still a child on Aulus’s Sicilian estate, an old Egyptian slave had told her