Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/188

 of them. They felt alone and they were alone, for across the whole width of the big, gorgeous tent they were out of earshot of the guards.

They gazed at each other for some moments.

Pompeia spoke first:

"There is no need," she said, "to tell you how astonished I am to see you here. To say how much I disapprove would be waste of breath."

"Your assumption that I care nothing for your approbation," Mucia replied haughtily, "is as baseless as it is undeserved. I have always striven to win your approval. Your behavior and your utterances to-day are but one more instance of your determination to find fault with everything I do, to pick flaws in anything.

"Your surprise at my being here is natural, but your censure I do not deserve. I have broken no family law, and surely there is nothing very reprehensible in transgressing a clan-custom which never had any sense in it. Why should I be bound in these progressive times by a narrow-minded adherence to a mere whim of tradition just because all other women of my clan have observed it?"

"Your clan?" Pompeia exclaimed fiercely. "It is no longer your clan. When my brother married you he made you, worse luck, a member of our clan. You are not bound by the customs of any other clan or by the statutes of any other