Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/216

 that is too much risk for mere private revenge."

"Revenge!" Clodius exclaimed. "Talk of revenge to Crassus. Hate drives him. What drives me is love. You can't move me by talking of risks, or of Rome. Not all Rome, not all the Empire, not all the world would be too much to risk to gain Mucia."

"Mucia!" Caesar sneered. "Love! You pose or you misuse words or both. You aren't capable of love and such as you are you do not so much as imagine you love Mucia. Why you are cruising on the offing of half the pretty women in Rome, and you'd tack inshore toward any port not well guarded. You'd be philandering round my wife if you dared and you'd dare if I were not careful and watchful. You love Mucia! You, ready to risk anything, let alone everything for her sake! Nonsense."

"No nonsense," cried Clodius with spirit, "but the plain truth."

Mucia, listening, heard no trace of insincerity in his tone. For her, for the moment, it seemed the plain truth indeed, and a pleasant thing to hear.

"Man, man," said Caesar, "granting that you are in love, have you spark of patriotism left? You've little enough. For your own mean spite and personal profit you ruined between Tigranocerta and Artaxata the most splendid campaign