Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/222

 V

Her heart palpitating with conflicting emotions, her mind whirling with antagonistic ideas, Mucia went to her sight-seeing woodenly and numbly. Yet her instincts of coquetry and finesse made her counterfeit a delighted interest which completely deceived Antony.

Inwardly she was torn between loving admiration for Pompey, pique at his coolness, even resentment against him, leaning toward that furious rage for revengefulness which woke so easily in a Roman woman. She was divided between distrust of Clodius and the newly realized fascination he had long exercised upon her. Fearing for her own life alternately woke to frenzied panic and calmed under the spell of exultant confidence in her incomparable husband. Solicitude for his lofty reputation and for him struggled against indignation at his curt ignoring of her attempt of a warning. The black certainty of impending doom surged up and drowned her spirit in despair and then again she told herself she had heard merely the inventions of three politicians talking for effect.

With these and a thousand other contending sensations and thoughts seething within her she kept up her judiciously interested smile, shot her