Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/192

 you flighty and capricious. Later I made sure you were vain and reckless. At last I judged you cynically shameless. I hated you all the while. But I wronged you, I deceived myself. You never deserved hatred; you are not worth hating, you are not a bad woman, you are worse. You are a fool. I hate you no longer, I despise you!"

The fury of the outburst dazed Mucia and her face showed it.

"O, I've no patience with you," Pompeia went on, "to be so shallow, so easy a dupe. Clodius has never been actuated by any motive but self-seeking. Out of that grew envy of Pompey. Pompey has never said or done anything that could give Clodius a chance to injure him, has never made any mistake in war or politics, Clodius has watched in vain for an opportunity, for a pretext against him. Once Pompey was off for the East and you left behind he naturally cast his eyes on you, and schemed to hurt or injure or discredit Pompey through you. When he found himself kept away from you by Caesar, he plotted to smirch you with innuendoes about Caesar's relations to you. You were silly enough to act so as to lay yourself open to his slanders and to come near disgrace from pure unthinking folly.

"Then, when Caesar avoided you in disgust,